


THOIAS 
TiPLADY 




Class 
Book 



\'\\ I 



The Cross at the Front 



The Cross at the Front 

Fragments from the Trenches 



BY 

THOMAS TIPLADY 

Chaplain to the Forces 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinbukgh 



Copyright, 1917, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



JJ ^-2-4- 



n 






New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 



DEDICATED 

with gratitude and admiration to the officers and 
men of the gallant 56th Division of London 
Territorials, who, with a courage unsurpassed 
in history, attacked the strong position of Gom- 
mecourt in the Battle of July the First, and for 
several hours held the third line of German 
trenches, accomplishing what Mr. Beach 
Thomas described as ' The Feat of the Battle,' 
and thereby helping their brave comrades far- 
ther south to break through on a wide front — * 
a front to which, some weeks later, the Division 
was Itself transferred, and had the great but 
dearly bought honour of taking part In the 
attacks culminating in the capture of Combles. 



PREFACE 

THE letters on life and thought at the 
Front contained in this volume were all 
written in tents and billets within range, 
or sound, of the guns. They were written 
quickly in odd moments and at the bidding of 
passing impulses. Under such circumstances 
literary finish was impossible, but it is hoped 
that they have captured something of the fresh- 
ness of feeling which one has while passing 
through unusual experiences, and which is apt 
to evaporate with the lapse of time. I have 
attempted no battle picture nor description of 
military operations, well knowing that such 
things are beyond me. I have merely gathered 
up some of the fragments that remained — frag- 
ments which might have been lost if not picked 
up at once. These I have attempted to sketch 
for the benefit of those at home. I trust they 
will reveal something of the spirit in which our 
soldiers lived and fought, suffered and died. 
THOMAS TIPLADY. 

B. E. F., France. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. THE LOST CHORD II 

II. LILIES AND FORGET-ME-NOTS l8 

III. THE KITTEN IN THE CRATER 24 

IV. 'abide with me ' 28 

V. the wayside calvary ' 35 

VI. BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE. . . 38 

VII. * BLIGHTY ' 48 

VIII. AN INSPIRER ON THE PARAPET. ... 55 

IX. THE TOUCH OF THE WIND 62 

X. tommy's mind (i"] 

XI. tommy's religion 74 

XII. tommy's morals ']'] 

XIII. tommy's idea of the churches.. 88 

XIV. THE chivalrous RELIGION OUR 

CITIZEN soldiers WILL REQUIRE. 96 

XV. THE UNTOUCHED CROSS IO9 

XVI. THE BELLS OF MAUREPAS I16 

XVII. THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF MONTAUBAN 1 26 

XVIII. THE OPEN CHURCH IN MAN's LAND. I33 

XIX. COURAGE AND THE CURTAIN I40 

XX. THE FALLING STATUE OF ALBERT .. I48 

XXI THE MEN OF THE LIMP I56 

9 



10 Contents 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXII. A DARK RIDE l6l 

XXIII. 'all seated on the ground'.... 171 

XXIV. POPPIES AND BARBED WIRE I79 

XXV. THE ROSE IN THE SKY 188 



THE LOST CHORD 

LAST night I cycled Into the neighbour- 
ing village to make inquiries about a 
lad who had perished in the fighting. 
As I drew near the church I heard sounds 
of music floating out through the shattered 
windows. If a seraph had stood in the 
streets of the village and sung heavenly songs 
to us, he could hardly have caused greater 
surprise to the occasional passers-by. The vil- 
lage lies forsaken. Every house is in ruins, or 
bears the marks of shells. There, at the cross- 
roads, where the sentry stands, a shell burst a 
few weeks ago. The soldier on duty felt no 
pain and needed no burial. Now, on the same 
spot, stood another soldier wistfully listening to 
the music of the church. The civilians have fled, 
and taken their belongings with them. A 
stranger race — an aforetime enemy — guards 
for them their land. The heroic breed is not 
dead, and in that youthful sentry is seen the 
England of a thousand years. I blessed him as 
I passed him, for in him I saw all the undimmed 
and undying glory of the race. 

11 



12 The Lost Chord 

I placed my bicycle against the churcH wall, 
and sought the back entrance. The right-hand* 
corner of the priest's garden wall had been 
blown away. The damaged archway had been 
propped up with a pole, and the path was 
blocked by a large shell-crater. The door of 
the vestry was off its hinges, and the floor was 
littered with books, vestments, and debris. 
Stepping over obstructions, I passed into the 
chancel. What a sight! A shell had been 
hurled through the centre of the wall immediate- 
ly above the altar. The wall was two and a 
half feet thick, but it had broken before the in- 
vader like brown paper. A hole two yards wide 
gaped like a wound. The picture above the 
altar had been blown Into a thousand fragments, 
and these were lying about the floor and win- 
dow-sills. The altar, with its ornaments, lay 
crushed beneath a mass of masonry. The win- 
dows and the communion-rail were shattered to 
pieces and scattered far and wide. A lump of 
stone had been carried from above the altar in- 
to the pulpit. A still larger stone had been 
hurled to the other end of the church and lay in 
the central aisle. It seemed the work of some 
mad giant — some Samson insane with sorrow 
for the loss of his eyes. Stones had smashed 
through the back of the movable pews and, with 
bits of the communion-rail, strewed the floor and 



The Lost Chord 13 

the seats. Plaster from the celling, fragments 
from the lamps, and stained glass from the win- 
dows crunched under my feet. I felt as guilty 
as if I were treading on lilies. I understood 
Jeremiah's tears. Chairs lay on the floor over- 
turned, like cripples, and no one lifted them. 
iThe unhinged side-door leaned helplessly 
against the wall. It was a scene of desolation 
f — a holy place desecrated by the dance of devils. 
,Yet, looking down from a picture on the wall 
was the sweet face of the Virgin. Straining to 
her breast her beautiful Babe, she seemed to be 
shielding Him from the horrible happenings 
about Him. But the figure of the suffering Sa- 
viour nailed against the wall on the opposite 
side showed how impotent even a mother's love 
may be. 

Out from the soul of the organ came a chord 
sweet as the fragrance of violets at the unseal- 
ing of a maiden's letter, and 'dear as remem- 
bered kisses after death.* It was the Lost 
Chord of Germany. All unconsciously the 
English lad at the French organ was calling up 
the spirit of old Germany to witness the havoc 
of new Germany in the temple of the God it has 
ceased to worship. 

At the peril of his life he was touching those 
ivory keys. Straight before him gaped the 
great hole above the altar. Yet he played on. 



14 The Lost Chord 

A few days before he had leapt over the para- 
pet amid a murderous fire, and, armed with 
bomb and bayonet, had sought the evil heart of 
a race that has become the disgrace and terror 
of mankind. But now the War was forgotten. 
He was back in the old days, and he heard not 
the sound of the guns. Peace wrapped him 
round as with a phalanx of angels' wings. By 
the incantation of his music he had called up the 
soul of old Germany as in the ancient days the 
Witch of Endor called back the soul of the sad- 
eyed Samuel. It sang of the shame and sorrow 
brought upon it by its children. ' Hear My 
Prayer ' trembled upon the air as from a soul in 
pain. Crushed beneath the iron heel of the 
Prussian, like a daisy beneath the hoof of a 
stamping Avar-steed, the ancient spirit of Ger- 
many cried for deliverance. The Hymn of 
Hate deafens in the streets which once echoed 
to the sacred melodies of young Luther. The 
grieved spirit of Mendelssohn turns away from 
the lifeless churches of his own land, as Paul 
turned away from the synagogues of his coun- 
trymen. Passing over the desolation of No 
Man's Land, he enters a ruined shrine and finds 
at the organ one with whom he may commune, 
and together the German musician and the 
English soldier pray for the return to the 
Fatherland of the gospel that makes men great. 



The Lost Chord 15 

' Hear My Prayer.' Will God hear, and send 
a new Luther to save Germany from the new 
tyrant and the new superstition? Or will He 
let the nation perish in its sins? 

The prayer of Mendelssohn died away into 
silence, and a message of comfort floated 
through the ruined church. ' O rest in the Lord; 
wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee 
thy heart's desire. O rest in the Lord.' It was 
a song of hope to the broken-hearted nations 
which have been swept into the vortex of this 
world-tragedy. It floated out through the shat- 
tered windows, and I saw a soldier quietly list- 
ening without. Oh that the bereaved and 
anxious might hear it, and rest in the Lord! 
The priest of the church was away in the 
trenches, but God had sent to us from heaven 
a prophet of the old and better Germany. The 
voice of Mendelssohn grew still, and there came 
to us the voices of English men and English 
women sweetly singing of the faith that had 
made light for them the valley of the shadow 
of death, and bidding us be of good courage. 
They had sung the hymn on the sinking deck of 
the Titanic — and they were singing it still: 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee; 
E'en though it be a cross 

That raiseth me, 



16 The Lost Chord 

Still all my song shall be, 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee. 

'Though like the wanderer,' the lad could not 
be silent. He lifted up his voice and sang with 
the heav'enly visitants. Then came the sound of 
other voices. They were from over the sunder- 
ing sea. Under their Influence we forgot the 
ruined church. We were home again. The 
melody, ' I hear you calling me,' passed out 
through the broken windows and wafted our 
spirits over the waters as on the wings of angels. 

'It's enough to break a man's heart. Isn't it, 
sir?' said a soldier who had just entered the 
chancel, and was looking at the ruins. From 
the soul of the organ came the answer : 



Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in Thee. 



There was one sanctuary left unscarred; one 
Rock that towered above the surging floods of 
hate and lust; and the lad at the organ had 
found it. 

While I draw this fleeting breath, 
When my eyelids close in death, 
When I soar to worlds unknown. 
See Thee on Thy Judgment Throne, 
Rock of ages, cleft for me. 
Let me hide myself in Thee. 



The Lost Chord 17 

He was a simple soldier — a private in the 
Rangers — who a few days before had seen 
hundreds of his comrades fall at his side as he 
charged through a triple curtain of fire, and he 
was playing, from memory, the songs that 
soothed his spirit. He was holding companion- 
ship with the truths by which men live, and for 
which men die. And he brought from the soul 
of the organ the chord which modern Germany 
has lost, and which no nation can lose and live. 
The German dead on the slopes around are the 
silent witnesses. 



II 

LILIES AND FORGET-ME-NOTS 

IT was Sunday, but here everything hap- 
pens on Sunday, and no one knows why. 
It just is so. After tea I had returned 
to my billet — a crazy attic at an estamiuet. On 
the bed I found a card-board box with crushed- 
in sides. It had come by post, and it filled the 
little room with the fragrance of flowers. On 
opening it I found a black-bordered letter lying 
amid lilies and forget-me-nots. The letter was 
from a broken-hearted mother in London, and 
the flowers were for a grave at Ypres. She 
wanted me to put the flowers on her boy's 
grave, for it was his twenty-first birthday. 

How I hated the War when I saw the flowers 
and the letter! If the monster would but dis- 
criminate! If it took the old and left the 
young, or If it slew the bad and spared the good, 
something might be said for it. But it does not 
even look into the eyes it is closing for ever. 
It is a soulless machine. It knows not whom it 
strikes, and cares not. The shell that I hear 
cracking as I write may be slaying a mother's 

18 



Lilies and Forget-me-Nots 19 

only son and support, or it may be putting an 
end to a life of crime. It does not know. The 
War is like a plough running amuck in a field of 
daisies. Here was a lad of twenty, and his fate 
was the fate of the daisy in the path of a plough. 
His mother sent flowers for his grave. 

In lilies and forget-me-nots 

A woman's love is writ; 
And to the soil that wraps her son 

A mother's heart is knit. 

Flowers for his twenty-first birthday I How 
often she had dreamed of the feast she was to 
give him ! And even the flowers will not be 
his. The regiment had moved from Flanders, 
and now was deep in France. At 6.30, in the 
corner of a field behind my billet, I was con- 
ducting divine worship, and I told his old com- 
rades the story of the flowers. Then I drew 
out my hymn-book and gave out, verse by verse, 
' For all the saints.' The worshipful voices of 
his comrades were the equivalents of lilies and 
forget-me-nots. It was an impressive moment, 
for our minds were with the sleepers at Ypres. 

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might; 
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight; 
Thou in the darkness drear their one true Light. 

Alleluia ! 



20 Lilies and Forget-me-Nots 

Then thoughts of the immediate future fol- 
lowed fast, and we prayed for ourselves: 

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold, 
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old, 
And win with them the victor's crown of gold. 

Alleluia I 

The glory of the dying sun gilded with its splen- 
dour the otherwise leaden clouds of the western 
sky, and we sang: 

The golden evening brightens in the west, 
Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest; 
Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest ! 

Alleluia ! 

But what should I do with the flowers? Like 
the water from the well of Bethlehem which 
David poured out before the Lord, they were 
sacred. Two days before, I had visited a little 
cemetery where many a lad will sleep — not with 
his fathers, but with his comrades. There were 
five graves, and none was a week old. The lads 
who were lying there were from Bedfordshire, 
Hertford, and far-away Somerset. All had 
died of wounds. Could I, even in the agony of 
death, have shown them English lilies and for- 
get-me-nots their eyes would have shone with 
joy and tears. I would take to them the flow- 
ers meant for the grave at Ypres. 



Lilies and Forget-me-Nots 21 

Next morning, therefore, I cycled Into the 
village, and down the high street. Then I 
turned into a sweet little country lane. The 
Tommies had named It 'Lovers' Lane,' and 
painted the words on a small board at the turn- 
ing. It Is not a lovers' lane, for there are no 
lovers. Ail have gone to the War. But Tommy 
knew what it ought to be, and it brought to him 
happy memories from over the sea. Had he 
not entered France singing 'It's a long, long 
way to . . . but my heart's right there'? The 
title 'Lovers' Lane' was not a joke of Tom- 
my's, any more than the chorus of 'Tlpperary' 
was the light song some dull people imagined. 
There was more of tears than laughter in It. 
The sackcloth next the skin was visible through 
the clown's gay trappings. For if the soldier 
and traveller dreams more of one thing than 
another it is of some lovers' lane and some little 
cottage in Tlpperary, or otherwhere. He leaves 
the dear place to do his duty, and marches away 
with a smile on his face, but he leaves his heart 
behind him. His heart is ' right there.' Tommy 
always speaks of deep things with the half- 
revealing, half-concealing reticence of poetry. 
Has a terrible shell fallen In his trench? It Is 
a 'Jack Johnson' — a lump of brutality with 
smiles In It. Has his comrade been killed? He 
has ' gone West.' 



22 Lilies and Forget-me-Nots 

I went down Tommy's ' Lovers' Lane,' and 
I came to what every lover comes to, sooner 
or later. I came to a cemetery. There the 
lads lay, and somewhere else, equally hidden 
from view, are women's hearts breaking. Is 
it only English hearts that break? Nay, on the 
left-hand side, divided only by the road made 
by human intercourse, was a French cemetery. 
Is it only the lovers of soldiers who have their 
hearts broken? Nay, for the French cemetery 
was the last resting-place of civilians. Tommy 
is right. ' Lovers' Lane ' is a sweet road, ' dewy 
with nature's tear-drops'; but on this side and 
on that side is a cemetery, and neither soldier 
nor civilian, English nor French, may tread that 
enchanted lane without coming to the place of 
tears and the sundering of sweet fellowships. 
The toll-bar of the road is not at the entrance, 
but at the end. The lover pays with pain, but 
without repentance, for 

'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 

I left my bicycle at the gate and entered the 
enclosure. I entered in the name of mothers 
and wives and sweethearts. When I have gone, 
and the guns have gone, they will come them- 
selves, and the place will be hallowed by their 
presence. The graves were neat and smooth, 



Lilies and Forget-me-Nots 23 

and a cross — the sacred symbol of suffering and 
sacrifice — stood at the head of each, and re- 
corded the soldier's name and nobleness. He 
was lying there ' for his King and Country.' I 
laid a lily, all white and gold, on each bed, and 
thanked God that there was no red in a lily. 
White for purity of his patriotism; gold for his 
triumph over fear, and selfishness, and death. 
But no red, for the bitterness of war was past. 
Then I dug a few forget-me-not roots into the 
mould of each grave, that they may witness to 
the unforgetting love which will guard the 
sacred dead. As I dug them in I prayed that 
God would lead some one with English flowers 
to the grave at Ypres, that he who had missed 
his mother's flowers might not be left without 
fair tokens of remembrance. 

My work done, I bade good-bye alike to lads 
and lilies, and stepped once more into ' Lovers' 
Lane.' 



Ill 

THE KITTEN IN THE CRATER 

I CANNOT get it out of my mind — that 
kitten in tlie crater. I had just come up 

with my men who had been in another part 
of the line, and a Comrade of the Cross was 
showing me the lay of the land. We passed 
the battered-down church from which soldiers 
were carting bricks to build incinerators — a 
good use of bricks from what had been a moral 
incinerator — and we entered the communica- 
tion-trench from the village street. After a 
time we reached a support-trench, and look- 
ing over the parapet we could see our own 
front line. No Man's Land, the German 
trenches, and the village beyond, with the 
church pointing with unheeded finger to heaven. 
Then we came to some forsaken dugouts. They 
had been rendered untenable by the violence 
of shell-fire. The roofs were battered in, and 
the debris lay scattered about. 'Look,' said 
my comrade, and I looked. There, in a crater 
made by a large shell, was a pretty little kitten. 

If anything speaks of home it is a kitten. It 

24 



The Kitten in the Crater 25 

carries our memory back to the blazing fire and 
the cat sleeping within the fender. Yet here 
are thousands of lads who have not been home 
for months, and here are poor dug-outs — the 
crudest possible imitations of homes — that have 
been battered in. Day and night these soldiers 
dream of home. There is not a man In the 
army who dare sing ' Home, Sweet Home ' ; 
and not one who dare play it on a gramophone. 
The men could not stand it, and no one dare 
try them with it. Home is ever in their 
thoughts. But when they speak of it they 
veil the depth of their feelings by calling it 
* Blighty.' When a soldier gets his leave-war- 
rant, whether he be old or young, officer or pri- 
vate, he behaves exactly like a schoolboy who 
has got a month's holiday. His joy bubbles 
over. In a trench a man is as much out of place 
as a kitten in a crater, and as surely will he leave 
the trench for the fireside. The home will tri- 
umph over the trench. 

The crater belongs to war; the kitten to 
peace. The one speaks of death; the other of 
life. And it is life that will triumph and death 
that will be burled. As I entered the village 
that day I saw some gunners fly for their lives, 
for the German guns had located their battery. 
Shell after shell I watched as it fell near the 
guns and sent up its cloud of smoke and dust. 



26 The Kitten in the Crater 

And yet over the shells as they hurtled through 
the air were two skylarks singing as though 
their throats would burst with song. They 
were teaching the same lesson as the kitten in 
the crater. 

When I look upon the horrors of war I do 
not despair, for in the toad's head there is ever 
to be found a precious jewel. Who that has 
seen it can ever forget the brave yet anxious 
smile of a lad as he stands listening to the shells 
passing ov^er his head and falling a little beyond 
him? Who that has seen a platoon entering a 
communication-trench, and shouting good-bye 
to the watching comrades, can ever forget it? 
The courage and cheerfulness of the men, their 
patience and self-denial, their devotion to the 
wounded and sick, are jewels which shine like 
stars in the black night of war, and make us 
almost love the night which reveals them to us. 
War is a horrible crater, but within it is the 
sweet kitten of human nobleness. 

On my way home on leave I put up for the 
night at a casualty clearing-station. There I 
saw a horrible sight that did not seem horrible. 
A gunner had alone, and by the skin of his teeth, 
survived the destruction of his battery. In 
body he was but the fragment of a man, and 
was a sad sight, but in spirit he was ennobling. 
A comrade was shaving him, and it was a mov- 



The Kitten in the Crater 27 

ing sight to see the tenderness with which he 
did it. The cheerfulness and courage of the 
wounded man were superb. They made what 
might have been sordid, sublime. They were 
the kitten in the crater. 'I think,' said my com- 
rade to one of the nurses, ' that his love for his 
sweetheart has pulled him through.' ' I don't,' 
replied the nurse. ' You think his nurse pulled 
him through?' he asked. 'Yes,' she replied; 
' he was brought in unconscious, and remained 
so for two or three days, and his nurse held on 
to him night and day till she got him on the 
road to recovery. It wasn't his sweetheart but 
his nurse who saved him ! ' The speaker was 
pale and worn. She, too, had had many a 
wrestle with death for the life of a stranger lad. 
She is like the daisy I plucked near the ruined 
dug-outs and carried home. The guns cannot 
destroy her. She springs up in every war. We 
find her here as surely as our grandfathers 
found her in the Crimea. War is horrible, but 
there is a kitten in the crater and a woman in 
the hospital, and the kitten and the woman 
speak of home and love and gentleness. The 
love which brought the kitten to the crater and 
the woman to the hospital is the love that will 
conquer hate and put an end to war. 



ly 

'ABIDE WITH ME' 

IT was Thursday evening, In a little village 
behind the line, and the hour we had 
chosen for worship. Stepping off the 
road that threaded its way through the cluster 
of farmhouses, we passed through a field, in 
which some of our comrades were playing at 
football, and entered the field beyond. There 
we found a quiet corner where the trees stood 
round us like to the pillars in the aisles of our 
churches at home. There were about fifteen 
of us. Some were in the R.A.M.C, and had 
just come out. The others were in an infantry 
regiment which had served twelve months in 
Flanders, and had been but recently transferred 
to France. Quietly they formed themselves 
Into a semi-circle round me, and I asked them 
what they would like to sing. 

'No. 52.' 

'That will do nicely,' I said. 'Will you 
please give it out?' 

At even ere the sun was set, 

The sick, O Lord, around Thee lay; 

2S 



'Abide with Me' 29 

O in what divers pains they met! 
O with what joy they went away ! 

Once more 'tis eventide, and we, 

Oppressed with various ills, draw near; 

What if Thy form we cannot see ? 

We know and feel that Thou art here. 

The evening was quite still. The voices of 
the men playing at football sounded sweetly dis- 
tant, and the sound of the guns broke upon our 
ears like the thud of incoming waves falling on 
the sea-shore. We lifted up our voices and 
sang, with the subdued note of the birds in the 
neighboring hedges. To him who has only sung 
this hymn in a church much of its beauty must 
of necessity be hidden. It is revealed only in 
the light of the setting sun. The men were fac- 
ing the Golden West. The pomp of the dying 
day lay upon the rustling leaves of the trees and 
upon the grass at our feet. It lit up with beauty 
the faces of the men as they sang. Soon it 
would be gone, and the shadows would wrap 
us round as with a mantle. We should feel the 
isolation of darkness, that which makes chil- 
dren afraid. A sense of loneliness would creep 
over us, and the coldness of nature would grip 
us. 

' We would see Jesus ' — the Light that never 
fails. And our hearts cried out to Him, 'Abide 
with us, for the day is far spent.' 



30 * Abide with Me' 

Thy touch hath still its ancient power, 
No •word from Thee can fruitles* fall; 

Hear in this solemn evening hour, 
And in Thy mercy heal us all. 

Then we bowed our heads, and I asked one 
or two of the men to lead in prayer — ^not know- 
ing which would respond, but leaving them to 
the Spirit's promptings. Quietly, naturally, and 
with humility, they lifted up their voices in 
prayer. Two prayed; three prayed; and I asked 
for more. It was so sweet to hear them that I 
could not bring myself to stop the music of their 
prayers. Five or six prayed; then came a 
silence as thrilling as speech, and, after it, we 
joined in the Lord's Prayer. We knew that He 
who taught us the prayer was in the midst to 
hear it, and to present it to His Father and 
ours. 

After the prayers, the men chose No. 14, with 
its fine opening line to each verse: 

Fight the good fight with all thy might. 
Run the straight race through God's good grace. 
Cast care aside, lean on thy Guide. 
Faint not, nor fear, His arms are near. 

Then I read to them the 91st Psalm: 

' He that dwelleth in the secret place of the 

Most High shall abide under the shadow of thei 

Almighty. ... He shall cover thee with His 

feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust. 



'Abide with Me* 31 

His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou 
shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor 
for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the 
destruction that wasteth at noonday. . . . For 
He shall give His angels charge over thee, to 
keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee 
up in their hands.' 

A few weeks later many of the men were to 
see the arrow that flieth by day, for suddenly 
shells fell like thunder-bolts about their billets, 
killing and wounding many. They were also 
to feel the terror by night, for while out in front 
of their trenches, digging in darkness, the foe 
discovered their presence and searched their 
ranks with shot and shell. But the Wings were 
over the lads who had met for worship on that 
calm evening of which I write, and who, with 
faces lit by the setting sun, had listened to that 
psalm of confidence in God. They were saved 
from the arrow by day and the terror by night. 

I asked them what they would sing next, and 
they chose No. 12: 

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead Thou me on; 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead Thou me on. 
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me. 
;• t.: :.; . . •.. ;.; y « 



32 'Abide with Me' 

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still 

Will lead me on, 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone; 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 



Ah, me I We did not know the meaning of 
hynms before. When you are far from home, 
with the darkness gathering round you, and the 
guns booming in your ears, you see again the 
angel faces you have left behind you, and 
wonder if the dawn will ever break through, for 
you, the long night of war, and restore them to 
you. Unutterable longings come to you, and 
at such times you know the meanings of hymns. 
As we sang Newman's hymn, and prayed for 
light, 'kindly' light, we knew something of 
Newman's secret. We understood something 
of his feelings as, with the shadows gathering 
over him, he sat alone on the deck of a wander- 
ing ship, far from England and home. 

After the hymn, I spoke to the men of the 
forward look to be seen on every page of the 
Bible. I showed them how, in all ages, God's 
people have been journeying ' towards the sun- 
rising'; how they have always refused to be 
content with things as they are, or have been, 
and, urged by a divine discontent, have pressed 
on to a ' better country,' and a ' New Jerusalem,' 



'Abide with Me' 33 

* whose Builder and Maker is God'; how they 
have sought the path that ' shineth more and 
more unto the perfect day,' and, refusing to 
believe in the finality of either darkness or 
twilight, have sought the pure light. A night of 
barbarism had overwhelmed the world, but it 
would yield to the daylight of love and peace. 

' The day must dawn, and darksome night be 
past' The land that was red with blood to- 
day would be red with roses to-morrow. A 
world for which the Son of God had died could 
not be lost, nor sink back into the abyss of bar- 
barism out of which He had lifted it. Though 
humanity was being torn and cast upon the 
ground in the process, the devil was being cast 
out of the nations, and our children would not 
be thrown into the fire as we had been. Our 
feet were yet in the wasteful wilderness, but our 
eyes were towards the sunrising and the Land 
of Promise. And our feet would follow our 
eyes. So I spoke to the brave lads. 

By now the night was on. We could scarcely 
see our books, but we turned to No. 51, and by 
the fast-failing light sang : 

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; 
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide; 
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 
Help of the helpless, O abide with me. 



34 * Abide with Me' 

The lights along the Front were becoming 
visible, but the worshippers had seen Him who 
is invisible, and they were unafraid. The faith 
that was in them had found its expression : 

I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless; 
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness; 
Where is death's sting ? Where, grave, thy victory ? 
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me. 

Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes, 
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies; 
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee; 
In life and death, O Lord, abide with me. 

After the blessing the men quietly separated 
and walked to their billets. They walked in 
twos and threes, speaking softly as they went. 
As they walked I stood and watched them, for 
there was One with them whose form was like 
unto the form of the Son of God. He was 
abiding with them. 



JHE WAYSIDE CALVARY 

I AST Tuesday I had my first Communion 
Service out here in France. We could 
not get a room of any kind, so we held 
the service in the corner of a field behind some 
billets. I spread my mackintosh on the grass 
and it served for a table ; I used the Communion 
service which was given me when I left the old 
country. Twelve men formed a semi-circle 
round me, and the evening shadows were gath- 
ering over us when I began to read the words, 
' Dearly beloved in the Lord.' Then in the 
twilight the twelve came one by one and knelt 
upon a corner of the mackintosh and received 
the broken bread and outpoured wine. As we 
knelt together in Holy Communion we could 
hear the voices of men returning from a game 
of football in a neighbouring field. As they 
passed through an opening in the hedge near 
us, they lowered their voices and passed quietly 
on to their billets in the village. When each 
of the twelve soldiers had partaken, and re- 
turned to his place, I gave out, verse by verse, 

35 



36 The Wayside Calvary 

by the help of an electric torch, ' When I survey 
the wondrous cross.' In the utter stillness of 
the fields we sang, and, although between the 
verses we could hear the low booming of dis- 
tant guns, we rejoiced in the love of God re- 
vealed in Christ Jesus. After the Benediction 
we went our several ways, but two of our lads 
walked with me to the crossroads. From there 
my way lay through a piece of open country for 
some two miles. The night was dark, and the 
wind wailed over the fields. On my right I 
could plainly see the flashes and flares that light 
up the battle-front at night. They held my eyes 
with a strange fascination as I took my solitary 
way. Suddenly I turned to a clump of trees on 
my left, and there saw what I had already seen 
by day — a tall, stone cross with a small bronze 
figure of Christ nailed upon it. There the cross 
stood in the gloom, with just sufl^icient light to 
show forth its solemn grandeur. I am a Prot- 
estant, but when I looked at the fitful lights on 
the French front and then turned again to the 
cross, I could not forbear to lift my hand to 
Him in salute. I know now why it is that on 
the French roads you see representations of the 
Crucifixion rather than the Ascension. It is 
that this weary, war-stricken world needs assur- 
ance of God's love rather than of His power. 
There on the right were our sons being sacri- 



The Wayside Calvary 37 

ficed, but there on the left the representation of 
the sacrifice of God's Son. The men I had 
knelt with at the Sacrament had been twelve 
months in the trenches. They knew the mean- 
ing of those lights on my right, but they knew 
also the meaning of that cross on my left, and 
standing between the two they can say, ' God 
is love.' 



VI 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE 

WE knew the 'Big Push' was coming, but 
we did not know when. I therefore 
announced a service for Holy Com- 
munion to be held on the Monday evening. All 
day long the rain came down in torrents, and I 
watched It almost as anxiously as the people of 
old must have watched the beginning of the 
Deluge. We had no building, and the Lord's 
Supper was to be spread in a field. We were, 
therefore, dependent on the weather. Towards 
six o'clock the rain stopped. The field was 
sodden, but the men came to the service in 
larger numbers than I had ever seen. We had 
the same hymns and form of service as we 
should have had at home, except that before 
we partook of the bread and wine we sang: 

Just as I am, without one plea, 
But that Thy blood was shed for me, 
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee, 
O Lamb of God, I come. 
38 



Before and After the Battle 39 

After the Benediction we sang: 

God be with you till we meet again, 

Keep love's banner floating o'er you ; 

Smite death's threatening waves before you; 
God be with you till we meet again. 

While I was packing the Communion-set the 
rain began again to fall, and I had to shelter 
under a tree. One or two lads joined me, and 
asked me to take their home addresses in case 
they 'went under.' 

The Friday evening following, groups of sol- 
diers loitered somewhat restlessly about the vil- 
lage. Others stood round the big guns, watch- 
ing the firing. Many were gathered round little 
wood fires cooking. They did not know what 
might happen, they told me, and they Intended 
to prepare for It by having a good supper. I 
dined at the Regimental Head Quarters. The 
meal was hurried, and coming events cast their 
shadow over us. We had to open the window, 
for the vibration from the big gun opposite 
threatened to break the glass. The blinding 
flash and the horrible roar following produced 
feelings of irritation with each shot. 

Dinner ended, the colonel, adjutant, and doc- 
tor buckled on their equipment. As we shook 
hands I wished them success and safe keeping. 
The men were already mustering in the village 



40 Before and After the Battle 

street, and a group of officers who had orders 
to remain behind, in reserve, were walking 
towards the church to watch the regiment pass. 
It was a fine evening. The sky, blue as the sea 
at Valparaiso, was flecked with clouds, white 
and beautiful as a n3.\y of becalmed sailing 
ships. Just as the golden glow of the sun began 
to burnish the western sky the men stood to at- 
tention. They were waiting on the sun, and the 
sun lingered in its setting. It was taking its last 
look of many a noble boy, and it seemed loth 
to go. At the first touch of twilight the men 
began to march, but, for fear of observation, 
a space was left between each company. By 
the church they halted. There we shook hands 
with the officers and shouted good-bye to the 
men. Then bravely, with laughter and song, 
they passed down the road. Other regiments 
followed, and soon the whole brigade had 
passed into the twilight. 

About midnight a Roman Catholic chaplain 
and I, provided with steel helmet, gas helmet, 
water-bottle, and sandwiches, made our way to 
the Field Ambulance. There, after a short wait, 
we boarded an ambulance-car and rode through 
the gunlit darkness to the advanced dressing- 
station adjoining the communication-trenches in 
a village on the line. It looked like a few yard3 
of an underground railway, and belonged to the 



Before and After the Battle 41 

'elephant' style of dug-out. The day's work 
had not begun, and we were each given a cup 
of 0x0. In the corner lay a soldier suffering 
from shell-shock, and waiting for the departure 
of the car that brought us down. He was quite 
deaf, and could not understand it. Every now 
and then he raised himself up, and tapped his 
head above the ears, much as a man taps his 
watch when it has stopped for some unaccount- 
able reason. A few minutes later a youth was 
brought in suffering from the loss of two fingers. 
A grenade had accidentally burst in his hand. 
He had escaped with remarkably small loss, yet 
he moaned more than any other sufferer that 
day. The morning wore on, and each hour the 
number of wounded increased. About 6 the 
sergeant-major decided to open the second dug- 
out, and asked me to go with him. Stretcher 
cases only were to be carried to No. i, and all 
walking cases were to go to No. 2. The R.C. 
chaplain served in the first, and I served in the 
second. All the morning the bombardment had 
been terrific. It sounded like the beating of a 
million iron drums. Great and small filled the 
air with their clangour. Thousands of shells 
passed invisibly over our heads, and carried 
death and destruction to our enemies on the 
other side of the line. Most of the German 
shells were concentrated on the infantry In our 



42 Before and After the Battle 

trenches, and we were kept busy in the dressing- 
station. It was hell, with the addition of hid- 
eous sounds. 

At last our watches stood at 7.30, and we 
knew that our men were ' over the top ' and 
charging across 'No Man's Land.' The scenes 
that followed defy description. I regretted that 
I had watched the men march out, for it almost 
broke my heart to see the condition in which so 
many of them came back. We forgot victory 
and defeat, rights and wrongs, and thought only 
of the frightful cost of war. The doctors 
worked like giants inspired. So did the ser- 
geant-major. Soon, however, the steps down 
to the dug-out were crowded with wounded, 
while outside they lay on each side of the road 
waiting their turn for treatment. One of my 
duties was to pick out the worst cases for im- 
mediate attention. Some were in a fainting con- 
dition, and others were bleeding through their 
bandages. Those who had but slight wounds, 
which had been dressed by the regimental doc- 
tors in the trenches, were hurried through with- 
out further bandaging, and told to walk to the 
dressing-station at the next village. Registra- 
tion and inoculation had alike to be dispensed 
with till they reached the Field Ambulance. We 
found wounds in every part of the body. Many 
had slight wounds in the head and owed their 



Before and After the Battle 43 

lives to their helmets, the steel of which had, 
though pierced, broken the force of the shell- 
fragments. All were brave and cheerful. They 
had been in hell, and the dressing-station was a 
resting-place on the way to 'Blighty.' A man 
had only lost an arm where he expected to lose 
all. He had been fortunate, and cheerfulness 
became him. Besides, there were others to 
think of, and cheerfulness was a duty. There 
was no moaning, except when the doctor probed 
a wound, or moved a shattered arm. When I 
took a man out of his turn there was no com- 
plaint by the other men. And gladly, after 
treatment, did they make way for a fainting 
man to get into a car before his turn. They 
talked of the battle with enthusiasm — such as 
could talk. They laughed at their wounds, and 
called themselves lucky in having got 'Blighty 
ones.' All were Territorials, and all alike car- 
ried themselves like heroes. There was a fine 
pride in the manner of some of the more seri- 
ously wounded. They had ' done their bit,' and 
knew it. They were too proud to moan. Some 
of the wounded we had to carry in our arms 
to the cars. Oxo and tea were passed round as 
quickly as they could be made. Many were al- 
most dying for a drop of water. The need was 
so great that I passed a bucket and a cup outside 
to a Church of England chaplain, who was him- 



44 Before and After the Battle 

self wounded later In the day. Only by ceaseless 
work could one keep from tears. My hands 
were red, yet the sight of blood had but little 
effect. It was the comparison of the scene be- 
fore the battle with the sight after It that threat- 
ened to break open the fountain of tears. 

Not till about i p.m. did the stream of 
wounded grow thin. Then one of the doctors 
asked me to go with him to breakfast — for none 
had touched food since the night before. Pass- 
ing down the street we found several seriously 
wounded men In an unprotected house outside 
the No. I dug-out, which was still fully occu- 
pied. We ran back for dressings and filled our 
pockets, but the absence of water and medical 
instruments led the doctor to abandon his idea 
of dressing the wounded where they lay, and 
the CO. coming up ordered the men to be put 
Into cars and driven to the Field Ambulance be- 
fore the Germans began shelling the street. 
Coats off, we lent a hand to the hard-worked 
R.A.M.C. stretcher-bearers, and soon the 
wounded were on their way to safety and 
attention. A lltde lower down a dozen Ger- 
mans lay by the wayside wounded. They were 
not serious cases, and, having been bandaged, 
were waiting for cars to take them away. Some 
one was giving them Oxo, and I got them some 
cigarettes. They seemed surprised at an of- 



Before and After the Battle 45 

ficer attending to them, and thanked me with the 
French word, ' Merci.' 

After a little bully beef and bread at the 
Doctors' Mess, the R.C. padre and I, at the re- 
quest of the CO., left for the Field Ambulance, 
where he said there was now the greater call on 
our services. For some two miles we followed 
the track, which led through the English and 
French batteries. They were working at full 
strength. German shells fell here and there, 
but probably our greatest danger was from 
* premature bursts ' from our own guns. We 
were too weary to hurry, but felt relieved when 
we got behind the last battery. The track led 
to a road that was being shelled by the Germans 
to prevent reinforcements being sent up. When 
close to our billet (a cottage, afterwards blown 
up) we had three narrow escapes. After a meal 
we continued our way to the Field Ambulance. 
There we found the ground covered with 
wounded men. They were lying on stretchers 
and waiting for cars to carry them to the cas- 
ualty clearing-station. The tents also were full 
of wounded. These were receiving the atten- 
tion of the doctors. In one tent the most seri- 
ous and delicate operations were being per- 
formed. We passed round tea, Oxo, and cig- 
arettes to those awaiting removal, and in some 
cases we * wrote home ' for men. 



46 Before and After the Battle 

All night the cars carried men away, and in 
a few days there was no sign that a battle had 
ever taken place. The tents were empty, and 
the grass was as green as ever. The wounded 
who were fit to travel were being welcomed in 
England, and the more serious cases were being 
tenderly nursed by Englishwomen in our hos- 
pitals in France. Never had men fought more 
gallantly — not even at Balaclava. They had 
charged, some smoking cigarettes the while, 
through three barrages of fire, and for several 
hours held the third German trench. Then, 
thinned in numbers and unable to get bombs 
through the barrages, they had been driven back 
until they reached their own lines. The killed, 
many of the wounded, and some who were un- 
wounded were left in the German trenches. 
Their names appear among the ' missing.' In 
most cases nothing is known of them on this 
side of the line. They went ' over the top,' and 
they did not return. Only the enemy can relieve 
our suspense concerning them. During a short 
truce next day the wounded were brought in 
from ' No Man's Land,' but one, in the short 
time allowed for search, escaped notice, and 
was discovered on the twelfth night by a patrol 
party. His recovery at the Field Ambulance 
caused much joy among the doctors. 

The calling of the roll on the morning after 



Before and After the Battle 47 

a battle Is the saddest of all ceremonies, for 

We look before and after, 
And pine for what is not. 

How the regiments were desolated ! They 
had been called upon to sacrifice them- 
selves for others, to hold as many guns and 
Germans against them as possible, while their 
comrades farther south broke through. To the 
end of life, as we sit in our peaceful homes, we 
shall see faces in the fire; faces that will never 
grow old, but remain for ever lit with hope 
and courage, as when, In the glowing beauty of 
the sunset, they marched through the village 
street and faded away in the deepening twi- 
light. 



yii 

' BLIGHTY ' 

TWO sentences flash like lightning through 
the army in France. The one is, 'Leave 
is opened' ; the other is, 'Leave is closed.' 
The first brings a smile to every face; the 
second casts a shadow. An officer said to me 
some time ago that leave is the greatest inven- 
tion of the War. Nothing else, he said, could 
have kept them going. 

And now I have been on leave myself. I got 
the good news on a Friday, and sent a letter 
home, but I outdistanced it by four days. 

On the Saturday evening, just before our 
regiment marched into the trenches, I with my 
bundle in my hand, set off for the nearest rail- 
way town. It was boyish, I know, to laugh 
from Inward joy alone, but I could not help it. 
And it was boyish for those who saw me to look 
so envious, but I know they could not help it. 
' Blighty ' would make even the Sphinx betray 
its secret. I hailed a passing wagon, and, of 
course, must tell the driver that I was on my 

48 



'Blighty' 49 

way to ' Blighty.' My words lit up his face 
like the striking of a match. Then the light 
went out. He had a long time to wait for his 
next leave. 

I spent the night with a colleague, and for 
half an hour after getting into bed I watched 
him filling a little box with souvenirs that he 
wished me to post to his wife when I got home. 
We were up at 5.15 a.m. Breakfast followed. 
At 6.30 we were at the station. At 6.50 
my friend was waving his hand to me as the 
train steamed out. Until the train actu- 
ally started we were haunted with the fear that 
leave might, at the last moment, be closed. My 
fellow traveller — a Church of England chaplain 
— was greatly perturbed. Even as he set off to 
the station a telegram had been handed to him 
announcing that he had been transferred to the 
Base, and must report to his senior before em- 
barking. His nerves were all jangled, and he 
feared that his leave would be stopped. He 
had been a bombing officer before becoming a 
chaplain, and somehow had missed his turn 
for leave. For ten months he had been in 
France. Many a time and oft he had rubbed 
shoulders with death, but he felt he could go on 
no longer. He had reached 'the limit.' 

Farther down the line two other officers 
joined us. They had landed in France from 



50 'Blighty' 

GallipoII, and had been over a year from Eng- 
land. As the train crawled along — and a fast 
train in France is a luxury that no soldier knows 
— we related our varying experiences, and 
sought for signs by which to read the secret of 
the future. At one of the stations the train 
stopped for some twenty minutes, and we tried 
to get food and drink. But it was in vain. 
Hundreds of Tommies crowded round the 
buffet, and we had to be content with buying a 
few oranges at the news-stall. Farther down 
the line we halted for half an hour, and here 
the Y.M.C.A. supplied the troops with free 
tea, and sold them biscuits and chocolate. We 
had, however, to provide our own mugs, and 
here Tommy had the advantage. At last some 
one unearthed a cup, and we used it in turn. 
We were given a brown liquid. It was tea, if 
the common report may be trusted; and as the 
Apostle Paul advises us to eat that which is set 
before us, asking no questions, it may be best to 
accept the common report. 

At last, after fourteen hours in the train, we 
reached the boat. We showed our leave-war- 
rants, and gave the R.T.O. (Railway Trans- 
port Officer) the larger half. Up the gang- 
way we passed, and hurried down into the sleep- 
ing saloon to find a bunk. Having appropriated 
one each, we sauntered about, waiting for the 



'Blighty' 51 

hour when cold dinner would be served. Sud- 
denly an officer hurried through the crowd, 

shouting out the name of Lieut. , There 

was no reply. Lieut. , like young Saul 

of earlier days, was hiding, among the stuff. 
Perhaps the officer was bringing the lieutenant 
good news, but the lieutenant thought that no 
news was the best news until the boat had 
started for 'Blighty.' 'Any one seen Lieut. 

?' cried the officer. No! No one had 

seen him. After a time dinner began. While 
one lot of men was feasting another lot stood 
round waiting to take their places. At last all 
were served, and we prepared for sleep. Crowds 
of Tommies covered the deck and slept in the 
purer but colder air. Others slept in the saloon 
below. We lay In the lower saloon, and our 
bunks were just under the port-holes. Each 
bunk was occupied, and each yard of the floor. 
There was little to choose between a bunk and 
the floor, for we all had to sleep, or rather lie, 
on the bare boards without mattress or blanket. 
At noon of night, after three hours' rocking 
at the quay, the boat started for ' Blighty.' All 
was still on board. With their lifebeks for pil- 
lows, officers and men were at rest. Most of 
them seemed asleep. Some were unmistakably 
asleep, for they were snoring. Oh, the boon of 
sleep I To be able to forget the heaving of the 



52 'Blighty' 

sea and to lie like a child in a cradle ! To for- 
get the lurking submarine and the lifebelt under 
your head! After the intolerable weariness of 
the journey, what a boon to be able to snore 
with utter indifference to all created things ! I 
am a poor sleeper, and not a good sailor, and 
I must have been green with envy as I watched 
for many long hours those blissful, snoring 
sleepers. 

At last the sleepers awoke and strolled on 
deck. I had taken my boots off, and tried to 
put them on again. But it could only be done 
by easy stages. It was worse than sitting on a 
tight-rope to put one's boots on. After each 
pull at the lace I had to lie down again, for my 
stomach, like Dublin, was seething with re- 
volt, and needed careful governing. At last I 
reached the deck and the fresh air, and felt that 
victory was assured. We were within sight of 
the haven where we would be. 

Oh ! dream of joy ! Is this indeed 

The lighthouse top I see? 
Is this the hill ? Is this the kirk ? 

Is this my ain countree ? 

I had but a halfpenny in English money, and 
with it I bought a paper at the station. What 
a bargain it seemed to buy, on the day of issue, 
for a halfpenny a paper that in France had cost 



'Blighty' 53 

us id. the day after its issue ! I borrowed nine- 
pence from the Church of England chaplain 
(who had had no opportunity to report to his 
senior, and was glad on that account), and I 
sent a telegram home to announce my arrival. 
What a luxury it was to be on a train that could 
run; to see hedges to the fields, and farmhouses 
in the midst of pastures! 

Soon we were in dear old London. While 
we were yet a great way off it seemed to stretch 
out its all-embracing arms and draw us to its 
bosom. I changed French money into English, 
got a wash, a shave, and a shampoo. Then I 
got some refreshments. A taxi rushed me 
through familiar streets to Euston Station. 
There, waiting for a train, I almost fell asleep. 
The train came, however, and in less than an 
hour I got out, and stepped into a motor-bus 
that carried me to the end of my street. I 
looked at the chimneys. The home-fires were 
burning. The smoke of their burning curled 
up towards heaven as sweetly, it seemed to me, 
as the smoke of the altar fires In the days of old. 
As I drew nearer I saw my wife at the upstairs 
window. She was at her watch-tower, waiting 
and watching, like many another faithful heart. 
I opened the garden gate. ' Scott,' hearing the 
sound, bounded through the open window of 
the dining-room ; but seeing me in khaki instead 



54 'Blighty' 

of black, he hesitated, and barked as at a 
stranger. ' Scott ! ' I called, and at the sound 
of my voice he rushed across the lawn to be the 
first to give me welcome. I had wondered 
many a time if he would know me on my return, 
and his kisses on my hands warmed my heart. 
Impeded by 'Scott's' welcome, I reached the 
entrance. The door opened, and my wife 
stood before me. I had reached ' Blighty.' 



yiii 

AN INSPIRER ON THE PARAPET 

IT was In a trench in the early morning. The 
soldiers were awaiting the word of com- 
mand which would hurl them against the 
most strongly fortified position of the battle- 
line. With them was a detachment of the 
Royal Engineers, whose duty it was to go over 
with the fighters, and, as each trench was cap- 
tured, turn the parados against the enemy and 
prepare for the Inevitable counter-attack. The 
work of the Engineers was not to lead, but to 
follow; not to attack, but to help the victors to 
defend their gains. The fighters with their 
weapons and the Engineers with their tools all 
stood ready to leap over the parapet. 

Promptly the command to advance rang out, 
and, like a dam bursting its bounds, a flood of 
living valour rolled upon the foe. Many miles 
in breadth this living Niagara leapt forth. Its 
seething mass of men scrambled over the bullet- 
swept parapet. Some fell back to rise no more.; 
But the mass swept on. Among the first ovei" 

55 



56 An Inspirer on the Parapet 

in the trench of which I write was an Engineer. 
He ought to have been behind, but he was in 
front. He leapt upon the parapet, and stood 
like a lightning-conductor amid a blinding sheet 
of flame and thunder-bolts. With one arm 
pointing to the enemy and another outstretched 
toward the men behind him, his voice rose above 
the tumult, ' On, Scottish, on ! On, Scottish, 
on ! ' And, like the wind over their native 
moors, the kilted lads swept across No Man's 
Land, and hurled themselves upon the enemy. 

I, who helped the wounded down the steps of 
the advanced dressing-station, know how well 
they fought and how manfully they bore their 
wounds. They smiled bravely at each stab of 
pain, and murmured, 'The battalion has done 
well.' When the battle was over, the Engineer 
who, in the heart of the storm, had cheered 
them on, was found a nervous wreck. He had 
risked all, and spent all, in one mad, glorious 
cheer. And when the colonel of this Scottish 
regiment sent in his list of heroes deserving 
decorations he did not forget the stranger who 
had cheered them on to battle. 

The Engineer is, in private life, a modest 
Christian, and an ardent worker in one of our 
London churches. Week by week he had, amid 
the drabness of civil life, sought to guide and 
inspire the young to deeds of nobleness, and 



An Inspirer on the Parapet 57 

when the blaze of battle burst upon him it found 
him unchanged — an inspirer still. The bayonet 
and its glory had been denied him. Only a 
shovel was his. But if he could not be a war- 
rior, he would be a warrior's inspiration and 
guard. He would cheer him on to battle, deepen 
his trench, build up his parados, spread his 
barbed wire, and prepare his gun-emplacements. 
And when the fight was over, the self-forgetful 
hero of the spade found his name written be- 
side the names of the heroes of the sword. 

It is well when the doer's name and the in- 
spirer's are placed side by side upon the scroll 
of honour. They represent two temperaments 
and two accomplishments which may be equally 
noble. The one represents the active tempera- 
ment, and the other the passive. They are the 
two halves of a circle. The doer Is the power 
upon the throne, and the inspirer is the power 
behind the throne. Women do not go to war. 
They are incapable of it. They are the passive 
half of humanity. But they inspire war. Ruskin 
said but the truth when he asserted that if the 
women of the world banded themselves to- 
gether they could stop all war. So they could, 
for good or evil. They do not stop all wari 
because they know there are worse things than 
war, and they would rather see their sons dead 
than dishonoured. Women are responsible for 
war as men. Women have always buckled on 



58 An Insplrer on the Parapet 

tHe warrior's armour, and always will while 
wars last. 

On my way back to France after leave, I 
watched from our carriage window the scene as 
the train slowly drew into the port of embark- 
ation. At the doors of all the houses along the 
railway-side were women, many with babes in 
their arms, waving us good-bye. And our hearts 
replied, ' God bless you.' They know the time 
of the 'leave train,' and every day they stand at 
their doors to wave a blessing to the returning 
soldiers. It is our last sight of English faces 
and English homes, and could any sight be 
sweeter or more inspiring? 'Mother,' said a 
brave Scots boy, a member of my church, 'I 
enlisted because I read of what the Ger- 
mans had done in Belgium, and I thought of 
you and my sister.' The women did more than 
Kitchener in recruiting an army. They beamed 
on the men in khaki, praised them, worshipped 
them, and walked out with them. They trans- 
formed common men into heroes, and made 
them seek to be worthy of the faith reposed in 
them. The men in khaki walked on the sunny 
side of the street, while the men in blacks and 
greys walked in the shadow. If a man wished 
for the sunshine of a woman's smile he must get 
Into khaki. Then she gave him both smiles and 
tears. Women could not go to war, but they 



An Inspirer on the Parapet 59 

could, and did, inspire men to go. And now 
that the men are at the Front the women are 
still their inspirers. 

As one of our wounded lay on a stretcher 
that July evening I said to him, ' Cheer up, old 
boy; you'll soon be in a nice white bed, and 
you'll have women nurses instead of men.' His 
face lit up with pleasure. ' That will be " a bit of 
all right," ' he said. A few days later we got the 
English illustrated papers, and saw photographs 
of women lined up in rows at Charing Cross Sta- 
tion, and throwing roses into the cars of the 
wounded as they passed. Even the flower girls 
were throwing their roses; throwing their very 
livelihood at the heroes, and refusing purchas- 
ers. The sight of such things almost makes the 
men here wish to get wounded, and pay with red 
wounds for red roses. It is the knowledge that 
they have the women's love, admiration, and 
prayers that keeps the men bright and brave in 
the trenches. 

In like manner the passive past lives in the 
positive present. The most valuable element 
in history is its inspiration. The great gift of 
Nelson to his country was not the defeat of the 
French, but the inspiration of his example. 
Nelson and Drake and the heroes of old walk 
the deck with Jellicoe and Beatty. They being 
dead yet speak. You cannot superannuate 



60 An Inspirer on the Parapet 

them. They will rule the Navy to the end of 
time. Gordon, Wolfe, Outram, Havelock, Sir 
John Moore — these men's greatest gifts to the 
Nation were not their deeds, but the inspiration 
of their characters. They rule the Army from 
their graves more firmly than does the Min- 
ister of War. Franklin and Captain Scott gave 
the world infinitely more by their failures than 
they could have done by success. Scott will be 
a fount of inspiration for centuries to come — a 
well at which all our boys will drink. The in- 
spirer multip'ies his life, even in his own gen- 
eration, and :heats the grave by living on in the 
lives of others long after his bones have turned 
to dust. 7 he names In the eleventh chapter 
of Hebrews hav^e shone like stars in every dark 
age, and have been the inspiration of all the 
Christian martyrs. As the bones of Elisha 
brought life to the dead body thrown against 
them, so the inspirers, even from their graves, 
touch the world's dead soul into life. 

The short-sighted, cold-blooded utilitarian 
may sneer at enthusiasm and cry, ' Why this 
waste?' He may denounce it as hysteria or 
fanaticism, but it is on its wings of inspiration 
that man has risen to the highest peaks of 
achievement. There is a Peter the Hermit be- 
hind every Crusade, and a gallant encourager 
on the parapet at every heroic charge. The 



An Inspirer on the Parapet 61 

cynic, sitting In his arm-chair, where shells 
never burst, may define him as ' a fellow who 
lost his head,' but the soldiers who followed 
him over the parapet called him a hero. That 
great Inspirer, the author of the ' Marseillaise,' 
Is as potent In the French Army of to-day as 
General Joff re himself ; and It Is In the acknowl- 
edgment of this fact that his bones have been 
removed to a grav^e near that of the great doer 
— Napoleon. Higher still. It was because Mary, 
with her alabaster box of ointment, was a great 
Inspirer that Christ declared that her name 
should for ever be associated with His own 
great Name. And It Is a promise that the Lord 
of all will not forget the Inspirers when He re- 
wards the doers. When the battle is over, they 
too shall have a share In the decorations of the 
King. 



IX 

THE TOUCH OF THE WIND 

THERE'S the wind on the heath, brother.' 
We are town-dwellers and had for- 
gotten. We need Borrow's gypsey to 
tell us of the unappropriated joy that plays 
about on the heath. I, for one, had to come to 
France to learn that Jesus loved the wind, and 
to understand something of its wonderful — I 
was going to say — personality. How do I 
know that Jesus loved the wind? Because, 
since I landed, His words about the wind come 
to me as often and unbidden as the wind itself. 
Most of my services have been held in the 
corners of fields. As a rule there is no building 
available; but the earth is wide, and the sky is 
a beautiful roof — with tracery more delicate 
than that of King's College Chapel. 

It has happened, therefore, that our hymns 
have been sung where there were no walls to 
bound them, and where the wind might come 
like any other worshipper, and not through the 
crevices of ill-fitting doors and windows. And 
the wind did come to the services, and they were 

62 



The Touch of the Wind 63 

the richer for Its coming. One felt its presence 
as one feels the presence of a saintly and beau- 
tiful woman in a service. While I have been 
praying and the men stood silently around, the 
wind has come. It has caressed my cheek as 
softly as the gentlest mother's hand, and it has 
whispered in my ear, 'The wind bloweth where 
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, 
but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither 
it goeth. So is every one that is born of the 
Spirit.' And I have felt encouraged and com- 
forted as one that is comforted of his mother. 

None of us has felt a mother's hand out here, 
but none of us has forgotten its touch. Now 
the wind's touch is a mother's, and Christ must 
have felt that when He used the word ' born.' 
Surely when He spoke of the mysterious com- 
ings and goings of the wind He was thinking of 
a mother's, for it is a mother's comings and go- 
ings which are the most intimate and mystic of 
all. Can anyone tell when his mother first 
came to him? Has any one been where she 
could not, and did not, come? 

We have no mothers out here, and yet we 
have. Our mothers come and go just as they 
ever did. They look in at our barn, or cottage, 
or dug-out at night, just as they did when we 
slept in our little cots. They look at our scat- 
tered belongings, and we try to tidy up a bit to 



64 The Touch of the Wind 

please them. They glance at the dinner-table, 
and we get a white cloth so that we may shock 
them no longer by our barbarian feasts. We 
meet in a field for worship, and they come. It 
is true the service is put in ' Orders,' but our 
mothers don't see the ' Orders.' Yet they find 
out about the service, and come. We lie in hos- 
pital, and they come. The Army Map Depart- 
ment issues them no maps, but they find their 
"way, somehow. A poor fellow smiles in his 
sleep, and we know why. His mother has come 
to him. It may be a man doesn't want his 
mother to come. It may be he shuts his heart 
against her, as we shut our churches to the 
wind; but she comes, and with her quick eye she 
discovers why he did not wish her to come. Oh I 
the comings and goings of a mother ! There is 
nothing like them but the comings and goings 
of the wind. 

Now Christ loved the wind. It reminded 
Him of His mother and of God. We know, 
and yet can hardly say how we know. But 
Christ was away from His home and mother, 
and we are. His services were out in the fields, 
and ours are. The wind kissed His cheeks as 
He preached, and it kisses ours. He was a 
wanderer, and it followed Him. We, too, are 
wanderers, and sometimes have not where to 
lay our heads. But the wind wanders with us. 



The Touch of the Wind 65 

He lived under the shadow of violent death, 
and the faithful wind told Him that His mother 
would be there when ' It ' came upon Him. And 
we are under the shadow. It lowers so darkly 
that no one pretends to Ignore It. 

At times His sorrow took Him out of the 
house where He was lodging with His disciples, 
and led Him to some upland. There the wind 
came to Him without hindrance. They were 
alone under the stars. It caressed Him, and 
whispered to Him of One who would never 
leave Him nor forsake Him, of One who would 
come to Him In His hour of need even as the 
wind came, and as secretly and mysteriously. 
As He felt Its touch, and listened to Its voice. 
He was comforted. He knelt to pray, and even 
as He knelt the wind drew its fingers through 
His hair as His mother had often done when, 
as a child. He had knelt at her knees. 

His prayer ceased, and He listened to the 
wind in the trees. Was It the wind, or was it 
the sound of angel wings? He had but to 
speak, and a legion of angels would be at His 
side. No, His strength would not fail in the 
hour of trial. He would be a Conqueror and 
not a coward on the day of battle. 

'There's the wind on the heath, brother' — 
on the heath of France. ' It bloweth where It 
Hsteth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 



66 The Touch of the Wind 

canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it 
goeth. It comforts like a mother, and like a 
mother it makes us think of God. It was a 
friend to Jesus, and He loved It. It came to 
Him in Gethsemane, and was with Him on 
Olivet. And the wind is still with us as it was 
with Him. It is here in this Gethsemane of the 
nations. It is here as a friend, and we love it 
as we love the mother who led us to God. For 
it speaks to us of that divine and mysterious 
Spirit of whom it Is the earthly symbol — that 
Spirit who is moving secretly through the camp, 
appearing when and where we least expect Him, 
and causing men to be born again; born to a 
nobleness they had not dreamed of, and to an 
experience of spiritual exaltation to which they 
had been strangers. Thank God ! There's a 
wind on this blood-stained heath, brother; and 
it bloweth where it listeth. 

O Breath of God, breathe on us noiv ! 
And move within ua while we pray. 



X 

TOMMY'S MIND 

WE have the best fed, best clothed, best 
paid, best washed army that ever, 
in the world's history, took the field. 
And these things will tell in the final battles. 
Kitchener, like Wellington and Nelson, knew 
that wars are won by bread and bacon, soap 
and water, boots and socks, and spare money 
jingling in the pocket. He knew the value of 
physical health and comfort, cheerfulness of 
spirit, and the conviction that every one was 
having fair and generous treatment. He knew 
that in a long war the human factor is the 
chief factor, and that he was not only raising 
a large army, but a healthy one, a contented 
one, and a winning one. The Germans put 
their supreme trust in guns. Kitchener put his 
in men. And his men will speak when their 
guns are silent. Guns are easily made. Men 
are not. A happy body is the first condition 
for a happy mind. And Tommy has got 
it. Of course, there are military operations 

67 



68 Tommy's Mind ' 

when the body is strained to its utmost, and 
when the weaker men break down. The 
marches are long, or the weather inclement. 
The trenches are muddy, and the dug-outs 
flooded. Clothing is worn out, or food cut off 
by the rapidity of the advance or the fire of the 
enemy. These hardships must come to even the 
best organized and the most humanely governed 
army. Tommy knows that, and is contented in 
mind, though ill at ease in body. It is in these 
times that Tommy is at his greatest. Our men 
are the most sublime when their conditions are 
the most sordid, 

I met some of our men coming out of the 
trenches last week. It had been wet for days, 
and the trenches were in an awful state. Every 
man was covered with mire to his shoulders, 
and a kilted battalion which came out with them 
was a sight to make one laugh and cry at the 
same time. Most of the men were limping, or 
dragging their feet; for the trench was new and 
narrow, and they could not lie down to rest 
their legs. They were too tired to march. 
They simply dragged themselves along the road 
and threw themselves down to rest till the 
other companies came up. They said that the 
trenches had been awful, but not a soldier 
breathed a word of complaint against any man 
under the sun. They had contented minds. All 



Tommy's Mind 69 

that could be done to mitigate their hardships 
had been done, and they were satisfied. 

At the head of one platoon was a young 
officer from Manchester. He is an exception- 
ally strong man, but he could hardly drag his 
feet after him. On other days I had marched 
at his side for sixteen or seventeen miles, and 
he had not shown the slightest sign of fatigue. 
When he had seen one of his men staggering 
under his pack and about to fall on the march, 
he had relieved him of his rifle and carried it 
himself. But on this occasion he, too, was drag- 
ging his feet, and his walk was eloquent of the 
hardships he had endured. We stopped for a 
word or two. Was he downhearted, or discon- 
tented, or beaten in spirit? His face w^as 
wreathed in smiles. I looked at the mire on 
his tunic. The tunic had come out of the trench, 
but his face seemed to have come out of a bath- 
room. ' You managed to get a shave,' I said. 
* Yes; I was expecting visitors,' he replied, and 
laughed at the absurdity of the idea of receiv- 
ing daintily dressed ladies in such a hole. What 
a glory such a man is ! Can any one wonder 
that he was given the Military Cross in the last 
list of honours? 

I saw the regiment on the next day. There 
was a smile on every face, but not a hair or 
speck of dirt; and every particle of trench mire 



70 Tommy's Mind^ 

had gone from their clothing and boots. Yet 
at night they had to return to the trenches to dig 
till daylight. Tommy's mind is a fine one and 
a contented one. How does he use it, however, 
in times of leisure? There are three main 
things he does with it. He employs it in read- 
ing, writing, and listening to gramophones. Per- 
haps the battalion has been in the line digging 
all night, but by noon they are all up and 
about, and have had breakfast. You see them 
sitting or lying about, anywhere and every- 
where, under cover or with only the sky above 
them. Some are brushing their tunics. Others 
are sitting half-dressed examining the seams of 
their clothing for nature's waifs and strays. 

Most of the other men are reading or writ- 
ing. You will see scores of them sitting solitary 
and writing letters. If a shell sounds rather 
near, the lad lifts up his head for a moment, 
looks in the direction of the sound, and goes on 
with his writing. Nine out of ten of the letters 
are to women. They are to mothers, wives and 
sweethearts. A father gets one sometimes and 
a sister occasionally, but only a mother can com^ 
pete with a sweetheart (actual or possible) or 
a wife. A soldier's letter is not easy to write, 
and the people at home must not expect much. 
The girls, in particular, must read between the 
lines. Even though he is only going to sign his 



Tommy's Mind 71 

name ' Jack ' or ' Harry,' a lad doesn't care to 
speak In a letter as he would speak under ' the 
milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.' 
The letter has to be read by an officer before it 
can be sealed and sent. Neither can he say any- 
thing about the War. * Mum's the word.' And 
as there is nothing else here, except the weather, 
he must be content to write about the weather. 
The rest of the letter he has to fill up with 
thanks for past parcels and hopes for future 
ones. If you see 'dear mother' in the middle 
of a letter it is a sure sign that the next word is 
a request for a parcel. They know that a 
mother would pawn her Sunday dress to be called 
* dear ' by her boy at the Front. They are won- 
derfully sly, these boys, sly as children, and they 
know how to talk to their mothers. ' Dear' at 
the beginning of a letter is a free gift, but 
'dear' in the middle must be paid for. It is 
' dear ' in more senses than one. But the mother 
has not yet beenborn who would not gladly pay 
for the word to the extent of half her kingdom. 
Ah, these rascally boys ! They will never act 
as anything but boys to their mothers. It 
doesn't pay to grow up. Mothers don't like It. 
Mothers will be mothers, so boys will be boys. 

All the other soldiers are reading. I was 
passing some the other day when I noticed a 
new kind of grave. There were a mound and a 



72 Tommy's Mind 

kind of a cross bearing the words, 'A live shell 
buried here.' ' So you bury things alive here, 
and warn one another against their resurrec- 
tion?' I said to a lad standing with a book in 
his hand. 'Yes,' he said, 'and there, close by, 
under that sack, is one laid out, and not buried. 
We couldn't find an undertaker.' ' Oh,' I said, 
glancing at his book, ' so you're studying short- 
hand.' 'Yes,' he said; 'one must do something 
to occupy one's mind.' I asked several men if 
they wanted anything to read. * Oh, yes,' they 
said eagerly; ' have you got anything? ' ' I have 
just added some books to my "Little Lending 
Library," ' I replied, ' and you will find them in 
a biscuit-box hung up under the archway near 
the Orderly Room.' The men rushed out, and 
when I returned, a few minutes later, the box 
was empty. I have sometimes offered socks to 
a man and he has replied, 'We have just had 
new socks served out; you had better give them 
to some one else who needs them more.' But 
I have never known the offer of a book declined. 
The bodies of the men are infinitely better fed 
and clothed than their minds. It is forgotten 
that the man in the army of to-day is a reader 
and thinker. He would infinitely prefer books 
to cigarettes and chocolates. He is not a child, 
neither Is he the Illiterate soldier of fifty years 
ago. Tommy has a mind as well as a body. 



Tommy's Mind 73 

There are no bookstalls here, and he cannot 
bring books with him because, like the snail, he 
has to carry on his back all he possesses, and 
weapons and clothing must come first. 

On Saturday night I met one of my old boys 
from Old Ford. ' Do you remember,' he asked, 
* those Saturday nights when you used to give 
us talks on books ? I have borrowed Palgrave's 
Treasury of Songs and Lyrics from a chum, and 
I read it at nights, when the guns are going 
loudly, to calm my mind. It has to be a good 
book to do that, sir — rubbish won't do it. And 
bless me, when I get to Burns's poems, such as 
"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," the 
memory of those Saturday nights all comes back 
to me. He'll never get the book back. I can- 
not part with-it. I shall hold on to it till the 
end of the War.' There is an appetite for 
books, but not enough books to satisfy it. And 
the desire is for worthy books, books that a 
man can live on and die on. The Churches 
ought to have a ' Book Sunday ' to buy books 
for the boys at the Front, and the Town Coun- 
cils ought to send out their lending libraries. 



XI 

TOMMY'S RELIGION 

I THINK A Student in Arms Is wrong when 
he says that the men believe absolutely in 
the Christian virtues without ever connect- 
ing them In their minds with Christ. I am sure 
they do connect them with Christ. He Is the 
background of all their moral and religious 
thinking. But a background is all-pervading 
rather than obtrusive and striking. The more 
perfect and potent the artist has made the 
background the less noticeable it is. We do 
not notice the sky much, but It Is more to us 
than we are aware. Behind the British soldier's 
thinking stands Christ. Take Christ away, 
and he would feel as desolate and lost as if 
you took the sky away. He never forgets, In 
his heart, that there once lived on this blood- 
stained earth a real 'White Man.' Talk of 
Christ lightly, and the soldiers distrust you 
and say one to another, ' I hope he isn't a hum- 
bug.' But speak Christ's name quietly and sin- 
cerely, and there falls a hush over the mess- 

.74 



Tommy's Religion 75 

room or billet. There is no other name that has 
such instant and extraordinary power over a 
group of soldiers. Christ's name is not often 
mentioned, and rarely taken in vain. He seems 
to stand behind the soldier's life, mildly yet 
strongly influencing It, like some sweet mother 
or wife or child who has passed within the veil, 
and whose name is so sacred that we only speak 
it in high moments. When the soldiers march 
into the trenches to die for others, they faintly 
feel that they are following Christ. But they 
do not speak of it, because they are too humble 
to compare their self-sacrifice with His. It is 
because of this inward, half-unconscious looking 
to Christ that they have been so much impressed 
by the wayside Calvaries. I do not think there 
is a man in the Army who could be got, on any 
consideration whatever, to fire a shot at one of 
these wayside crosses. They represent Christ, 
the ' White Man,' their Man. I believe a man 
would have a bad time out here If he dared to 
say anything against Christ. 

But while they connect their belief in the 
Christian virtues with Christ, they do not — the 
bulk of them — connect these virtues with the 
Church. Christ is a ' White Man,' but they 
suspect the ordinary church-going Christian of 
being but a whitewashed man. Scratch him, and 
they fear the white will come off. They see the 



76 Tommy's Religion 

likeness in name between Christ and Christian, 
but not the likeness in life. They hav^e weighed 
up the Church, and, in their judgment, it is 
found wanting. The Church must alter, or I 
fear it will, at the end of the War, have little 
attraction for the men at the Front. Christ at- 
tracts them, but not the Church, and for the 
simple reason that it is not sufficiently like Him, 
and everybody knows it and feels it. 

The Church must replace Don't by Do. With 
the Church's present conception of religion one 
might almost define a Christian as a man who 
does not drink, does not smoke, does not swear, 
does not waste money, does not dance, does not 
go to theatres, does not work or play on Sun- 
days, does not associate with ' doubtful charac- 
ters,' does not gamble, &c., &c. He is a man 
who ' does not.' Now let a man take, say, the 
Gospel of St. Luke and read it through at a sit- 
ting, forgetting all the commentaries and all his 
own preconceptions, and at the end let him say 
if the Christianity of the churches is the Chris- 
tianity of Christ. Is it as the moon to the sun, 
a faithful though faint reflection? Rightly or 
wrongly, most of the men in the Army believe 
it is not. Yet they are looking for the shimmer- 
ing white robe of Christ, and will follow its 
gleam — even into the churches. 



XII 
TOMMY'S MORALS 

A FEW days ago an over-anxious father, 
writing to me about a boy in this 
division, said, *I thought when he 
joined the Army there would be a chance of re- 
form, but it seems to be one of the worst places 
in the world to bring about a reformation of 
character. I believe there are thousands of 
our young fellows now in France who never 
touched this cursed thing (drink) before join- 
ing the Army who to-day both drink and swear.' 
Now is that the whole truth, or only one side 
of it? I have lived with this division (mostly 
London men) for over six months at the Front, 
and in the little villages at the back of the Front. 
Without using either a whitewash brush or a 
tar brush, I will paint Tommy as I have seen 
him. I am not a policeman, but a padre, and 
have looked for the good in men as earnestly as 
for the bad. Some think of Tommy as being 
clothed in sins of scarlet hue. Others think of 
him as robed In the spotless white of righteous- 

77 



78 Tommy's Morals 

ness. But, as a matter of fact, Tommy's moral 
dress is neither scarlet nor white. It is khal^i. 
I have seen the khaki turn to glistening white, 
but that has been in the great moments of life, 
when he has climbed the Mount that looks 
down both on the Valley of Life and the Valley 
of Death. Then Tommy has stood trans- 
figured. 

But his everyday dress is khaki, and it is 
the only one he cares for the crowds to see. Sing 
a song of his courage, and he drives you off the 
stage with ironical cheers. Speak of him as a 
hero, and he thinks you are ' pulling his leg,' and 
winks a knowing wink at his neighbour. He 
tells you of times when he ' got the wind up,' 
but never of deeds of daring. It is bad form in 
the Army. 

The Tommy at the Front is temperate. 
There arc about twenty thousand men in a divi- 
sion, and I have seen many divisions. But in 
my six months here I have not seen one helpless- 
ly drunk or disorderly soldier. And I have only 
seen four or five showing any signs of intoxica- 
tion. A soldier in this regiment lost a stripe 
through being found intoxicated, but I did not 
see him. Also, on July i, a sergeant of the 
Royal Engineers ran amuck with a loaded re- 
volver, and shot a corporal who used to be a 
member of my church at Old Ford. I buried 



Tommy's Morals 79 

my comrade, but I did not see the sergeant. He 
is said to have been drunk, but this could only 
hav^e been by stealing the rum ration. Those of 
us who lived through the bombardment of that 
day know that he may have been driven tempo- 
rarily insane. The verdict of the court-martial 
I did not hear. 

I have seen in five minutes at Euston Station 
more drunkenness than in six months out here. 
It is a crime here to sell spirits to soldiers, and 
a crime to buy. Officers can buy spirits In cases 
of a dozen bottles, but not by the glass. Tommy 
cannot get it at all. Whisky is seen In, I think, 
all officers' messes, though some officers prefer 
their water neat. Doctors' messes have, so far 
as I have observed, the most teetotallers. A 
non-commissioned officer is sometimes offered a 
glass of whisky by his officer; and the ser- 
geants' mess Is, In some companies, able to get 
an occasional bottle from the captain, but the 
practice Is illegal. It Is a left-handed action 
that must be done secretly. Tommy's meals are 
necessarily teetotal. The estaminets are only 
open to soldiers for two hours at noon and two 
hours In the evening, and all drinks must be 
consumed on the premises. The drinks avail- 
able are mostly light wines, light beers, cider, 
grenadine, and citron. French wines and beers 
are lighter than English, and are the dally drink 



80 Tommy's Morals 

of French families. I have seen no French civil- 
ian drunk on them, and on his shilHng a day 
the most thirsty Tommy could hardly reach in- 
toxication through them. English beers are, 
however, to be obtained at the more enterpris- 
ing estaminets. No doubt many men who came 
out as teetotallers now take French wines and 
beers. This does not, however, mean that they 
have * gone to the dogs,' or will continue the 
habit in England. 

Water out here is scarce and bad. No well 
must be used until the doctor has analysed the 
water. Long use has inoculated the people 
against its germs, and they can drink with im- 
punity water that would kill new-comers. Even 
the best water needs boiling. Much of it must 
be chlorinated. Tommy cannot get aerated 
waters. Mineral waters seem unknown. The 
French cannot make tea. Coffee they make per- 
fectly, but serve it without milk and in cups 
like thimbles. Tommy has, therefore, little 
choice in drinks. Also, in the little villages 
along the line where most of the troops are, the 
estaminets are the only places where the men 
can gather under a roof and sit at a table. At 
best Tommy's billet is a barn, and at worst a 
trench. The warmth, light, and comfort of an 
estaminet are not to be despised. He pays for 
his seat by a glass or two of liquors but slightly 



Tommy's Morals 81 

alcoholic. It is that, or the cold barn with 
chlorinated water, or the everlasting stew called 
tea. Even so, many choose the barn, and they 
were not used to barns at home. 

In winter a rum ration of an eighth of a pint 
Is issued to all the men in the trenches who care 
to take it. The ration is not issued as a bever- 
age, but as a medicine. It is supposed to keep 
out the cold and induce sleep. It is, so far as I 
can gather, recommended by most of the regi- 
mental doctors. In summer the ration is 
dropped, except that before a battle a ration is 
sometimes served out. 

Many people in the homeland have been 
alarmed by their boys' references to ' canteens.' 
A canteen is a good thing with a bad name. It 
IS a shop, opened by the military authorities, 
where soldiers can buy groceries and other nec- 
essaries at reasonable prices. It is very seldom 
that a canteen sells drink, though cases of wines 
and spirits can be bought at some of the largest. 
Many canteens are run by chaplains. 

To sum up: If there are fewer strict tee- 
totallers in the Army in France than in civil life, 
there are also fewer drunkards. I wish our 
brave lads were as safe from strong drink when 
home on leave as they are here; and that the 
people of England were as sober as their sol- 
diers at the Front. 



82 Tommy's Morals 

Barrack life has a tendency to Increase im- 
morality, and after wars there is generally an 
increase of venereal disease. The separation 
of masses of men from the influence and con- 
versation of pure women has led them into the 
company of evil women. In this War the sepa- 
ration is on a larger scale than ever. Will it 
be followed by the same evil effects? I thinlc 
not, for there is a moral purpose in this War 
unknown since Cromwell's day. It is not safe 
to foretell the future from the past, for the 
foreteller Is not always a seer. Often he fails 
to see vital spiritual differences. Two years ago 
the papers were full of baneful prophecies of 
the immoral conduct which would ensue as a 
result of the raising and billeting of the new 
armies. It was a libel on our youth. The fore- 
tellers had not realized the moral fervour which 
made our lads soldiers and our girls their in- 
spirers and comrades. There is immorality in 
the Army, but there is also immorality in civil 
life. Is it greater in the Army than it would 
have been in civil life? I doubt it. The immi- 
nence of death is an example of influences which 
cut both ways. Some it makes reckless, and 
they say, ' Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for 
to-morrow we die.' 'We are young,' they say; 
' we have not lived, and yet we have to die. We 
may not eat the permitted fruit; let us eat the 



Tommy's Morals 83 

forbidden.' Others the imminence of death 
sobers and sanctifies, and barring the entrance 
to the house of sin they see an angel with a 
flaming sword. So it is with other deciding in- 
fluences. What spurs on one man restrains an- 
other. We cannot, therefore, foretell the final 
gain or loss. I will therefore relate only what 
I have seen. 

I met a youth of this division at the Field 
Ambulance. He was eighteen years of age, and 
tainted with venereal disease. He had been 
trained near Cambridge for several months. 
He came to France pure. At the Base he was 
in a camp three weeks. One night he got a pass 
into the town, and with another soldier entered 
a State-regulated house of vice. There were, 
he said, several such houses, and many soldiers 
frequenting them. When I met him he had just 
reached the Front, and as a result of his one 
transgression found himself unfit for duty. I 
have heard of other cases, but I have not been 
at the Base, nor in the other towns where such 
houses are said to exist. I can, therefore, only 
speak from hearsay. 

Here, on the actual Front, I have come across 
no proved case of immorality. There is no pos- 
sibility of immorality in the trenches, and in the 
villages where the men rest when out of the 
trenches I have neither seen nor heard of any 



84 Tommy's Morals 

misconduct. Our soldiers are friendly and re- 
spectful to the French women and girls, but 
there is no ' walking out ' with them, and no un- 
seemly familiarity. They have liv'ed up to 
Lord Kitchener's counsel, and are popular and 
respected in the homes of the people. They 
are as well behaved here as In our own 
homes. They think there are no girls like 
English girls, and their respect for them makes 
them respectful to all. 

Even in Shakespeare's time the soldier was 
' full of strange oaths,' and his vocabulary has 
been handed down from generation to genera- 
tion. My correspondent speaks of the Army as 
a place where men learn to swear, and the news- 
papers are constantly printing protests against 
the language used in the camp and on the parade 
ground. It is undoubtedly bad, but is it much 
more so than in the mine and workshop? Much 
of the language complained of is not morally 
bad at all. It is merely a misuse of words, as 
when a Varsity man calls a thing ' awfully 
jolly.' Tommy wants to be emphatic, and hav- 
ing few words at command he uses such as are 
In fashion at the moment. His strong adjectives 
offend our taste, but are certainly not Immoral. 
Nor must we confound bullying, hectoring lang- 
uage with blasphemy. 

When we come to the real thing we find that 



Tommy's Morals 85 

there is comparatively little blasphemy In the 
New Army. You can live in a camp for days 
without ever hearing the words *God' or 
' Christ ' taken In vain. The men neither swear 
by God nor call on God to airse. The word 
* damn ' is often used, but the men do not asso- 
ciate It with God. It is merely an expression of 
irritation, like the Yorkshire 'drat it.' We 
must compare the language of to-day with the 
language of the past to realize the new rever- 
ence for God's name which has come into the 
Army. The old language lingers in some of the 
drill instructors, but even these feel that they 
lack appreciative audiences. Slang and vul- 
garity are common, but these are matters of 
artistic taste rather than of morals. There is, 
however, one unclean word for which, an in- 
terpreter informs me, the French have no 
equivalent. The French are saved from it by 
their superior delicacy of mind. Our Tommies 
used it in civil life, and they use it even more in 
camp life. The only saving thing about the 
habit is that the men use the word without, as 
a rule, the slightest thought of Its meaning. On 
the other hand, if they did think of Its meaning, 
they would cease to use It, for their general con- 
versation Is not lewd. The language at the 
Front is not very refined, for we are not an 
artistic people, but we are a moral and religious 



86 Tommy's Morals 

people, and there is very little blasphemy in the 
speech of our soldiers. The excision of five or 
six words would make an enormous improve- 
ment. 

There Is a considerable amount of gambling 
at the Front, but not more, I think, than In civil 
life — perhaps not so much. It must not be for- 
gotten that here life is in the open. There are 
no doors or blinds to hide vice as in civil life. 
No doubt many youths have been exposed to 
temptations they would have escaped at home, 
and some have yielded to them. But, on the 
other hand, many are infinitely stronger and 
nobler through their life here. They came out 
boys in body and soul, and they will go back 
men. 

Alas, I have not spoken of Tommy's real 
morals at all, but only of four of his negative 
virtues, and a man might have all these and still 
be a thoroughly bad man, bad as a Pharisee. 
But who can speak adequately of his positive 
virtues? Think of his fine comradeship. In 
the fighting of this week a soldier told me that 
he saw a dead officer and a dead sergeant in a 
shell-hole, and their arms were clasped round 
one another's necks. Think of Tommy's cour- 
age, fortitude, cheerfulness, self-denial, gener- 
osity, honesty, loyalty, obedience, and forgiving 
spirit. Think of his love of duty, home, and 



Tommy's Morals 87 

country. I have seen our Tommies live, and 
suffer, and die. They are men, and I never 
receive a salute from one of them but I give an 
equally respectful one in return. 



XIII 
TOMMY'S IDEA OF THE CHURCHES 

I REMEMBER, some years ago, knocking 
at a door in the East End and inviting the 
man who opened it to attend the services of 
our church. ' I shall not attend the services,' he 
replied bluntly; ' we do not need the church, and 
we are as good as the people who go to church.' 
It was rather rude of him, and I was inclined to 
put him down as having a double dose of origi- 
nal sin, besides much that he had acquired. The 
idea of thinking that the people outside the 
Churches were as good as the people in them! 
I was surprised. We have assumed that we are 
better. We have taken it for granted. We 
ought to be; but are we? My neighbour said 
*No.' He knew our claim to be better, but he 
would not admit the claim, and regarded it as 
an impertinence. Now, after nine months at 
the Front, I have been forced to the conclusion 
that the average man in the Army agrees with 
the man in the street. It is easy to put down 
his lack of appreciation to sin. We can say that 

88 



Tommy's Idea of the Churches 89 

he savours not the things of God; that he lacks 
spirituality; Is worldly minded; and irks put- 
ting a restraint upon his lusts. 

Such an assumption is easy. It gives us a fine 
feeling of superiority, such as the Pharisees pos- 
sessed. But the assumption is dangerous. It Is 
In morals what arguing In a circle Is In dialectics. 
We become the victims of our own assumptions. 
If we were better, would It not be obvious? 
Would any one deny it? Has any one ever 
claimed to be as good as Christ? I forget 
whether Mr. Bernard Shaw has or not. Prob- 
ably he has, for he will claim anything to make 
the multitude wonder how he got his feet where 
his head ought to be. But, Intellectual shockers 
apart, did ever any one claim to be ' as good 
as' Christ? If the average man Is blinded by 
sin, how does he realize that Christ was good? 
The New Testament teaches us that Christ is 
the Head, and the Church His body. But the 
man In the Army, having looked at both, de- 
clares the Head to be of gold and the feet of 
clay. If, spiritually, he Is too blind to distin- 
guish the metal of which the feet are made, how 
does he manage to distinguish that the Head is 
of pure gold? We do not get rid of his judg- 
ment of us by giving him the rejoinder of the 
Pharisees, *Thou wast altogether born In sins, 
and dost thou teach us?' 'The heart of man 



90 Tommy's Idea of the Churches 

is deceitful above all things and desperately 
wicked,' and no doubt he has his share of its 
evil, but are not our hearts the hearts of men? 
And may they not be deceiving us ? If we claim 
that God has given us a ' new heart,' is our 
neighbour wrong in asking for proofs? Like- 
ness to Christ is the only acceptable proof, and, 
in the judgment of the outsider, whatever it is 
worth, we are like Christ only as clay Is like 
gold. 

It Is a pity that we have claimed to be better 
than those outside the Churches. Are we not 
pitching our tents rather near the camp of the 
Pharisees? Does the sun need to tell us that 
it Is brighter than the moon? It is a pity that 
we have even thought of our goodness. A 
goodness that thinks of Itself is suspect. Can a 
man be humble and know it? Only an egotist 
thinks how humble he is. Goodness is like 
health. It never thinks of itself. The pure in 
heart cannot know they are pure because they do 
not know what impurity is. If they did they 
would not be pure. They only know they ' see 
God.' A man is as unconscious of his goodness 
as a rose of its perfume. In Christ's account 
of the Last Judgment (Matt. xxv. ) the only 
people who thought they were good were the 
bad people. * Lord,' they say, ' when we saw 
Thee an hungered, or athlrst, or a stranger, or 



Tommy's Idea of the Churches 91 

naked, or sick, or In prison, and did not min- 
ister unto Thee?' But the good people were 
astounded at the news that they had been good. 
'Lord,' they asked, 'when we saw Thee an 
hungered, and fed Thee? or thirsty, and gave 
Thee drink? When we saw Thee a stranger, 
and took Thee in? or naked, and clothed 
Thee?' 

We ought to know we are lovers of Christ 
as surely as we know we are lovers of our wives, 
but we ought not to know we are good follow- 
ers of Christ any more than we ought to know 
we are good husbands. The wife needs to be 
pitied whose husband knows he is a good hus- 
band. Her heart is probably very near to 
breaking. The husband who is truly good 
doesn't know it. He thinks himself utterly un- 
worthy of his wife, and wonders what she sees 
in him to love. Moral goodness had the same 
unconsciousness. The Pharisees thought they 
were good, and Christ told them they were 
worse than the drunkards and harlots. This 
was no hyperbole. We who profess to be re- 
ligious ought to read at least once a month, 
very carefully and honestly, Matt, xxlii. And 
it would be much more to the point if, instead 
of painting the Ten Commandments over the 
communion table, or behind the pulpit, we were 
to paint there some of these terrible words of 



92 Tommy's Idea of the Churches 

Christ. Our temptations are more subtle than 
those we are put on our guard against in the 
Ten Commandments. A man cannot drift into 
murder without knowing it, but he can Into self- 
righteousness. The rich young ruler had kept 
the Ten Commandments from his youth up, but 
he was not great enough to be a Christian. He 
did not know it was so hard to follow Christ, 
and he went away sorrowful. We don't go 
away sorrowful; we go to church instead, and 
think that is being a Christian. There will be a 
rude awakening for some of us some day. It 
will not be a rude neighbour from the slums who 
will tell us we are no better than the people out- 
side the Churches. It will be Christ. Had we 
not better, while there Is time, listen to the voice 
of this man of the street? He Is unordained, 
and wears no white collar or black coat. His 
manners are not the best, nor his language the 
purest, but he speaks with the sting and bold- 
ness of a prophet. 

Much of the preaching of the last fifty years 
has been on the theory of salvation, and an un- 
expected thing has happened. We have, almost 
unconsciously, come to think that holding the 
correct theory of how God saves us, combined 
with attending the services, and living a respect- 
able hfe — such as not drinking, not swearing, 
not gambling, and a lot of other 'nots' — 



Tommy's Idea of the Churches 93 

is being a Christian, and doing all that is 
required of us. The argumentative style 
of St. Paul has rather overshadowed the 
more terrible simplicity and fiercer challenge 
of Christ's teaching. We have recoiled be- 
fore the awful simplicity and reality of 
Christ's words, and have found a sort of dug- 
out with St. Paul. We have got our texts 
from him, and have used them for debates 
about the correct and incorrect theories held 
by men in relation to the Atonement, the Sacra- 
ments, and the Church. No man of sense will 
say that theories are of no consequence, and 
that a man can think what he likes if only he 
acts rightly. Men cannot think wrongly and 
act rightly for long. But we have overdone the 
theory part, and we have forgotten that just as 
right thinking assists us to right acting, so right 
acting assists us to right thinking. ' If any man 
will do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' 
When Newton saw the apple fall he pondered 
on the law by which it fell, but he probably also 
picked it up and took it to the cook. There are 
household questions as well as cosmic questions 
to be solved. Theory, alone, leads to sterility. 
The farmer must sow as well as think. We 
have given to our people, and to the world, the 
impression that a Christian is a man who holds 
correct views of Christian doctrine, and abstains 



94 Tommy's Idea of the Churches 

from evil. He is a man who thinks this and 
that, and does not do this and the other. We 
did not mean to give such an impression. It is 
due to wrong emphasis. We have emphasized 
the negative virtues rather than the positive, 
and right thinking rather than right acting. In 
other words, we have taken the line of least re- 
sistance, and sent few away sorrowful at the 
greatness of our demands. We are known by 
what we doji't believe and donU do, rather than 
by what we do believe, and do. Is what we 
don't do more impressive than what we do? 
'What do ye more than others?' comes the 
stinging question. 

I was in an officers' mess some time ago, and 
they were discussing a new arrival. One of 
them said, 'He is very quiet; he doesn't drink, 
doesn't smoke, doesn't play bridge, and doesn't 
swear.' ' He must be religious,' concluded an- 
other. That Is it. The words were not spoken 
in malice. It is the conception of a Christian 
that we have given them. If the new officer 
had been described as cheerful, generous, hos- 
pitable, and brave, they would not have con- 
cluded that he must be religious. Yet which 
description is the more like Christ? How 
brave, cheerful, generous, and hospitable Christ 
was ! He was the soul of chivalry. No virtue 
had been associated with the new officer that a 



Tommy's Idea of the Churches 95 

swindler and criminal might not possess, yet he 
had at once been classified as a Christian. But 
men possessing the cardinal Christian virtues of 
charity, humility, joy, generosity, hospitality, 
hope, courage, and self-sacrifice are not clas- 
sified as Christians, but merely as * good fel- 
lows.' They are 'white men.' These 'white 
men ' may be in the Church or out of it. There 
is, in the popular mind, no necessary connexion. 
That is the tragedy of the Church. Well may 
we ask, ' What is wrong with the Church ? ' 



xiy 

THE CHIVALROUS RELIGION OUR 

CITIZEN SOLDIERS WILL 

REQUIRE 

SURELY with our non-drlnking, non-smok- 
ing, non-swearing, non-gambling, and our 
attendance at the Church, we are but on 
the outskirts both of morals and religion ! It is 
not what a man doesn't do that marks him off as a 
Christian. It is what he does and is. The Chris- 
tian characteristics stand out plainly in the Gos- 
pels. Love is the virtue of virtues. 'God is love.' 
*Love is the fulfilling of the law.' 'Thou shalt 
lov^e ' is Christ's summary of Christianity. St. 
Paul also places love on the pinnacle: 'Faith, 
hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of 
these is Charity.' Charity is the mother and 
nurse of goodness. The first test, therefore, of 
a Christian is, 'Has he charity? Does he 
love?' It is also the first test of the Church. 
'Does the Church love? Has it charity?' 
The soldier knows that Christianity is love. In 

96 



Religion Soldiers Will Require 97 

the Citadel Cemetery on the Somme I saw this 
inscription on a white cross: 

No. 4878, Pte, S. Williams, 

2nd R. War. R. 

Killed in Action, 

3-6-1916. 

'Greater love hath no man.' 

He died to save another. 

Does the Church love? Does it die to save 
others, as did its Master? I have lived five 
long years in the East End of London, and have 
walked by night and day through its miles of 
stinking streets, where the poor are housed 
worse than the rich man's horses. The pale, 
thin faces of the children haunt me as the hor- 
rible sights on the Somme will never haunt me, 
for a ragged, starving child is more terrible to 
think of than a youth blown to fragments or 
lying on a stretcher in mortal agony. The 
tragedy is deeper and more enduring. I have 
a stray dog here ; to-night I offered her buttered 
toast, and she declined It. But where in the 
East End is the child that would turn away 
from buttered toast? When, at Christmas, we 
gave them bread, spread with jam, and cheap 
cake, they stuffed themselves like ravenous 
wolves, and then, by stealth, hid what they 
could under their clothing. Think of their poor 



98 The Chivalrous Rehgion Our 



&' 



bodies and poorer souls, and of the dark way 
before them! In face of this massacre of Inno- 
cents, infinitely greater than Herod's, what does 
the Church do? She washes her hands, like 
Pilate before the murder of Christ. 'The pov- 
erty of the poor,' we say complacently, ' is due 
to their drinking habits and thriftlessness.' The 
libel stifles the clamour of our consciences, and 
so we hug it to our hearts. Many of the poor- 
est never touch drink, and many of the thrifti- 
est are starving. Thrift? Thrift is a fine art 
taught by mother to daughter from generation 
to generation. How can a woman practise It 
In one or two rooms without an oven, boiler, 
or cupboard? If we had cared two pins for the 
poor we should have gone to see them, and If 
we had seen them In their rooms we should have 
been Incapable of talking such drivel. Drink? 
Many who drink were predisposed to It by Ill- 
feeding and misery. As one of the poor women 
said, 'To get drunk Is the only way to get out 
of Whitechapel.' Drink Is the only morphia 
for their pain, a wild attempt to forget their 
misery. But if, as we pretend, drink has made 
Whitechapel, Stepney, Shoredltch, Poplar, and 
Bow Common, what have we done to the drink? 
The Church was horrified at the sinking of the 
Lusitania, and denounced the perpetrators, but 
it Is not horrified at the sight of thousands of 



Citizen Soldiers Will Require 99 

men, women, and children drowning in a darker 
and deeper sea. 

Does the Church love? When a mother 
loves, though she be a queen, she becomes in- 
terested in soap and water, sheets and blankets, 
boots and clothing, and many other mundane 
things. And when the Church loves she will 
have something to say about rents and wages, 
houses and workshops, food and clothing, gar- 
dens, drains, medicine, and many other things. 
Where is the Church's mother-love? Where 
is her fierce mother-wrath as she sees the chil- 
dren trampled in the mire? It is easy to go to 
church, and to abstain from drinking, swearing, 
and gambling, but it is not easy to love. Love 
brings labour, and sorrow and self-sacrifice. 
Love sometimes says, * Sell all that thou hast, 
and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt 
have treasure In heaven ; and come, follow Me.' 
This Is not like going to a home missionary 
meeting and giving the price of a meal to the 
collection. It is leaving beautiful houses, and 
pictures, and gardens, and music, and going into 
mean streets and dirty dwellings. It is leaving 
congenial friends and joyous fellowships for 
service among the unfortunate, unattractive, 
and, perhaps, depraved. It is giving where 
you cannot hope to receive in return. There is 
the sweat of heart and of brain, the carrying of 



100 The Chivalrous Rehgion Our 

sicknesses and sorrows. To your own cares 
and troubles there is added the unspeakable 
trouble of the multitude. 

' How hardly shall they that have riches enter 
into the kingdom of God?' It is much harder 
than being a teetotaller, or going to services, or 
paying other people to live and work among the 
poor. To those who treasure the beauty of 
the fields, the sky, the drawing-room, and places 
where music and charm linger, it is not easy to 
follow Christ Into mean streets to minister to 
the aged, sick, blind, or starving. It is not easy 
to turn on the oppressors of the poor, and in 
hot, pure anger scourge them as Christ scourged 
the money-changers in the temple. If Chris- 
tians but loved, vast stretches of poverty would 
cease to exist, and the reproach which we have 
brought on Christianity would be lifted. But 
we ' pass by on the other side,' and leave the 
wounded and robbed to be cared for and de- 
fended by others who name not the Name. 

Humility is the sister of Charity, and they 
are never far one from the other. The 
Church's lack of love has made the East End 
possible, and her lack of humility the West 
End. Christ opened His Sermon on the Mount 
with humility. It was placed as the gate to the 
kingdom of God. Humility does not mean 
timidity or lack of spirit. History reveals no 



Citizen Soldiers Will Require 101 

courage so fearless as the courage of the 
humble. It does not mean ' ordering ourselves 
lowly and reverently to all our betters.' It 
does not need Christianity to teach us that. A 
contemptible thing like snobbery can do it, and 
do it much better than Christianity. The 
labourer bows before the farmer, the farmer 
before the squire, the squire before the baron, 
the baron before the duke, the duke before the 
king; and yet every one of them may be as 
proud as Lucifer, and as far from humility as 
darkness from light. When popes had tem- 
poral power, even kings kissed their toes, but 
it had nothing to do with humility. 

Humility is ordering ourselves lowly and rev^- 
erently before our inferiors. When Christ, the 
King of heaven, chose fishermen to be His com- 
panions, He was humble; and when He washed 
their feet He gave us the supreme example of 
humility. It was largely because of His humil- 
ity that the proud Pharisees hated Him. 
'Here,' they said, * is a rabbi as much the dar- 
ling of the mob as a mountebank. He has "no 
respect for the cloth," and is "lowering re- 
ligion" in the popular estimation. He feeds 
the multitude like a baker, and brings fishes into 
Peter's net like a catchpenny. He opens men's 
eyes with clay like a quack-doctor. He asso- 
ciates freely with drunkards and harlots. He 



102 The Chivalrous Religion Our 

is a " wlne-bibber," for "birds of a feather 
flock together." He has not the dignity proper 
to a rabbi. He went into a respectable man's 
house, like Simon's, and had no more respect 
for Himself, or His host, than to let " a woman 
in the city, which was a sinner, wash His feet 
with tears and wipe them with the hairs of her 
head." ' When Christ came to wash His dis- 
ciples' feet, even Peter rebuked Him. Peter 
thought his Master had not a proper opinion 
of Himself. 

Humility is compact of spiritual insight, won- 
der, and compassion. It cannot look on even 
fallen human nature without reverence. Man 
is God's temple, and however battered and 
dilapidated it may be, when we stand before it 
we are standing on holy ground. A snob is 
lowly only before his social 'betters,' but a true 
Christian is lowly before a beggar or a drunk- 
ard. I have been in many a shattered church 
on the Front, and they fill me with not less awe 
than the churches out of danger. So with a 
fallen soul. It is still God's temple, and the ruin 
that has come upon it ought to make us the 
more reverent. This soul has been in the firing- 
line. The soul is as I might have been. Some 
day God's hands may rebuild it, and make it 
more glorious than before its fall. Before the 
fallen souls of men Christ stood reverently, 



Citizen Soldiers Will Require 103 

and, loving them, died for them. He would 
forgive men seventy-times seven, and turn none 
away. Even the woman taken in adultery He 
would not give over to the stoning. ' Go, and 
sin no more,' He said. Without a trace of con- 
descension He mingled with the poorest and 
the most sinful. What is, perhaps, more, He 
mingled with the rich and the proud without a 
touch of self-consciousness. Rich or poor, all 
were the temples of God, and He regarded 
them with reverence and love. 

Where is the Church's humility? We can- 
not even leave our ostentation outside the church 
door and kneel as brothers at the throne of 
grace. When a stranger comes into our pew, 
do we feel honoured? Do we feel that our 
pew has been made the trysting-place for a soul 
and God? 

But there are deeper tragedies that spring 
from our pride. An innocent, trusting girl, or 
it may be a wild, wilful girl, gets into trouble. 
The man deserts her, and she is overwhelmed 
with shame and sorrow. Her parents are sup- 
posed to be Christians, but do they act as Christ 
would act? She has been forsaken. Her hope 
of happiness, and honour, and home has per- 
ished like the flowers of spring. Her conscience 
is outraged, and she cannot still its voice. Her 
inteUigcnce rebukes her for ignorance and folly. 



104 The Chivalrous ReHgion Our 



b' 



Her heart cries out against her for having 
brought sorrow and sliame upon her loved ones. 
Her imagination turns against her with terrible 
visions of the Valley of Pain through which she 
must pass. She is weak, ill, and beside her- 
self. She needs a father's forgiveness, counsel, 
and protection. She needs a mother's love, 
sympathy, and understanding. What often 
happens? Her Christian parents turn her out 
of doors, or ' go on at her ' till home becomes 
unbearable, and she flees from it. Her condi- 
tion, or lack of training, prevents her from get- 
ting work. Friends and neighbors cannot be 
expected to shelter one whom parents turn 
adrift. What becomes of her? It is not the 
parents' purity that dooms her to a life of sin 
and shame; it is the parents' pride. She has 
brought disgrace on an honoured name, and by 
turning her out of the home they will show the 
world how they abhor such conduct. Yet they 
call themselves followers of Christ, who refused 
to give a worse woman to be stoned — a milder 
fate. Christ saved these women. The Church 
cannot. Why? Because It is not like Him. 

The West End and the East End are the 
measure of the Church's failure. They are 
standing proofs of a deficiency of chivalry in 
the Church ; and a Church without chivalry will 
never appeal to the men who have, time with- 



Citizen Soldiers Will Require 105 

out number, risked their lives for others on the 
Somme and elsewhere. There can be no re- 
ligion of chivalry without humility and love as 
the dominant notes; and for these cardinal vir- 
tues we must go back to the Gospels, and study 
the teaching, life, and death of Christ. Mean- 
while, the majority of men in our heroic citizen 
Army stand outside our sanctuaries. They are 
waiting for us to manifest the heroism and 
grandeur of the Christianity of Christ. This 
high demand is really the finest possible tribute 
to the formative and all-persuasive influence of 
the Church in the era that has now closed. We 
have, by making known the example and teach- 
ing of Christ, raised the standard of public 
opinion and expectation. We have spread 
abroad a new Christian idealism, and it is by 
this that we are being judged. Things that 
were passable in days gone by are intolerable 
now. Slums are now a reproach to Christian- 
ity; but in the old days they were regarded as 
the natural products of life, and as much to be 
expected as rain and frost. The poor existed 
for the development of charity in the rich. To 
a degree hitherto unknown the Church has suc- 
ceeded in leavening politics, journalism, litera- 
ture, and social organizations with the ideas 
of Christianity. The standards of life and 
thought outside the Church have therefore 



106 The Chivalrous Rehgion Our 

risen, and the Church can only keep Its leader- 
ship by a closer following of Christ. The moral 
greatness of our citizen Army is at once a trib- 
ute and a challenge to the Church. The Chris- 
tian conception of life and conduct has been gen- 
erally accepted as the ideal, and we have to 
make it the real. Christian conduct must no 
longer be merely conventional. It must be cre- 
ative. There is a call for spiritual daring and 
adventure. As St. Paul christianized Greece 
and Rome, so we must christianize industry and 
politics and abolish poverty and vice. To ab- 
stain from evil is not enough; we must adven- 
ture as Wesley, Dr. Barnardo, and Florence 
Nightingale adventured. We have made our 
doctrines known; now we must experiment, and 
show how they may be applied in communal life. 
The monastic ideal has prevailed too long, and 
we have been too content with conserving and 
fencing-in our religious life. We must leave 
our hermit cells and go abroad into every de- 
partment of life to make it Christian. We need 
spiritual pioneers, investigators, and discover- 
ers — men who will experiment in the applica- 
tion of Christianity to our complex social life. 
The Church must convert Christian thought in- 
to Christian action, and teach in deeds what it 
has already taught in doctrine. Our soldiers 
are not hostile to the Church. They are disap- 



Citizen Soldiers Will Require 107 

pointed with it. They look for a leadership 
they do not receive, and turn away more in sor- 
row than In anger. After the War the Church 
will have a new and supreme opportunity — the 
finest history has provided. But it must prepare 
for it; and the only adequate preparation is a 
fresh study of the life and teaching of Christ. 
This must be free from both prejudice and cow- 
ardice. We must neither twist His words nor 
water down His teaching. We must obey His 
commands as a private obeys his captain, no 
matter where they may lead, or what sacrifices 
they may involve. The cultivation of such crea- 
tive virtues as humility and charity, accompa- 
nied by absolute loyalty to the teachings of the 
Gospels, would give the Church the undisputed 
leadership of the world. Our soldiers go to 
mutilation and death at the word of a second- 
lieutenant. Shall we shrink from an equal loy- 
alty to Christ? Without such obedience there 
can be no leadership for the Church, and she 
will fail to win the allegiance of our chivalrous 
soldiers. As England took its stand by the side 
of Belgium, so the Church must take its stand 
by the poor and weak and fallen. Every one 
knew where to look for Christ; and when the 
Church is found following In His steps and per- 
forming the same acts of chivalry, there will be 
a glorious rally to her flag. The Church must 



108 Religion Soldiers Will Require 

lure the brave and noble as the court of King 
Arthur lured the knights of old, and they must 
be encouraged to sally forth redressing wrongs, 
protecting virtue, and delivering the oppressed. 



XV 
THE UNTOUCHED CROSS 

I WAS visiting some of my men in a neigh- 
bouring village on the line. It is indeed a 
' deserted village.' Long ago the civilians 
were driven out, and there is not a house that is 
not torn with shells. The fields around have run 
to waste, and, as they have no hedges, they look 
like a prairie. The road is almost deserted in 
the daytime, and the only living things to be 
seen are gunners dwelling in the ground like 
rabbits, and appearing in the open from time to 
time. Overhead was spread the vast impassive 
sky — a calm ocean of blue studded with innum- 
erable islands of pure white cloud. There was 
no sound but the sound of the guns, and, looking 
up at the beautiful sky, it was hard to realize 
that one was cycling over the plain of death, 
and that it would be well to make haste. Na- 
ture seemed to be in one of her mocking moods 
— a woman with an angel's face and a devil's 
heart, luring one to destruction amid scenes of 
innocence. 

109 



110 The Untouched Cross 

I was visiting men who the previous Saturday 
had, from the neighbouring village, flung them- 
selves over the parapet, and through three cur- 
tains of fire had charged down upon the enemy. 
The survivors of that fiery blast were now in 
this shattered village, or in the adjoining 
trenches, now flooded to the waist by the pre- 
vious day's thunderstorm. I arranged for a 
service on the coming Lord's Day, and after- 
wards visited the men in their billets and dug- 
outs. Then, drawn from my path as one would 
be by the sight of a wounded man, I turned 
towards the ruined church. For three centuries 
it had stood the storms of nature and the rav- 
ages of war, but it had bowed its noble head 
before the fiery blast of this War. I dared not 
enter by the front door, for half the steeple had 
gone, and the other half stood like an old man 
trying to straighten himself, and ready to fall 
at any moment. The graveyard was waist-deep 
with weeds and grasses. The gravestones were 
shattered with shells. The outside walls of the 
church were pitted with shrapnel, and the win- 
dows were blown into fragments. I clambered 
over heaps of stones and through long grasses 
to the farther side, and entered through the 
doorless doorway. A ghastlier sight never met 
the eyes of Jeremiah. The roof had fallen 
through, and the white clouds looked down upon 



The Untouched Cross 111 

the debris. The floor could not be seen for 
fallen stones. The figures of saints had been 
blown to fragments. I picked up the crown of 
one, and laid it down again. There was a 
golden star on the brow, but the gold was dim. 
I picked up fragments of shell, and, walking 
round the walls, I picked shrapnel bullets out 
of the plaster. Nothing had escaped. Not a 
yard. The walls were pitted with shrapnel like 
a man with small-pox. 

I had walked round three parts of the church, 
and was looking at the rubbish on the floor, 
when suddenly something caught my attention, 
and I looked up. The sight startled me, for 
somehow it had escaped me as I had glanced 
round the church on entering from the other 
side. There before me stood a large wooden 
cross fastened against the wall, and bearing, 
nailed upon it, a life-sized figure of the Saviour. 
It stood intact — the one thing in the church un- 
damaged and untouched. The altar had gone, 
the saints had gone, the roof and the windows 
had gone, the chairs had gone — all had gone 
save Jesus only. The worshippers had fled, 
but He remained. The church was in ruins 
about Him, but He was untouched. It was an 
awesome sight amid that scene of desolation. 
Amid the fiery blast of bullets He had remained 
with arms outstretched interceding with God 



112 The Untouched Cross 

for a ruined world. And no bullet had touched 
Him. There was not a mark on his body. The 
priest, when he had seen the warning finger 
writing upon the wall, had taken away the 
church treasures, but, with sure religious in- 
stinct, he had left the crucifix, which he revered 
most of all. He would not touch that. Christ 
would be His own protector, and bear the full 
blast of the world's malignity in His own 
strength. He needed not the poor device of 
man. And amid the awful hail of shells and 
falling masonry nothing touched Him. A few 
minutes later I stood outside, looking at the 
steeple and speaking with a passing soldier. 

'It is a strange thing,' he said, ' that the 
crucifix inside should have remained untouched 
through it all.' 

Strange indeed 1 The clock in the steeple 
was still and in ruins. No more would it use 
its hands in dumb show to speak to the people 
below. It was the symbol of time and all things 
earthly, and the shells had destroyed it. But 
the crucifix was the symbol of the Eternal, and 
of the Undying Love which no shell can touch. 
In all that deserted village the crucifix alone 
stands untouched. Even the iron finger-posts 
were smashed and lying In the mud beside the 
road. The villagers have nothing left but the 
cross. It alone has borne the blast. It alone 



The Untouched Cross 113 

will give them welcome when they return. 
Their homes are in ruins, and their fields are 
waste. Even their church and the graveyard 
of their dead are a heap of ruins. But there 
are two arms outstretched still to bid them wel- 
come. 

Like that blasted village and ruined church, 
the world of our thought and feeling lies a heap 
of ruins about our feet. When victory and 
peace come, who will have heart left to ring the 
bells or put out the flags? We have buried our 
heart's love in a strange land, and the city of 
our dreams is a heap. The very finger-posts 
are broken. What can we do when the excite- 
ment of the War is over but return to the ruins 
of our former life and weep over them? Our 
wasted fields we can plough afresh and sow. 
We do not mind being poor. But our homes I 
God help us when the boys for whom we have 
kept the home fires burning come not back, and 
when the father asks the children to spread out 
wider at the table that the gap break not the 
mother's heart. Our churches, too, how shall 
we find them? Will the War have shattered 
our Church life? Who can tell? Our busi- 
nesses, our homes, our churches, all will have 
changed. The mark of the shell will be on them 
all. Where shall we turn then to the unchanged 
and unchangeable? 



114 The Untouclied Cross 

In the midst of our fallen civilization the 
Cross stands untouched. Christ has stood in 
the midst of the fiery blast with outstretched 
arms calling the stricken peoples to the shelter 
of His love. His arms are outstretched still, 
and there is room for the world between them. 
Broken business men, bereaved parents, lonely 
maidens, fatherless children, there are shelter and 
solace for all beneath the shadow of the abiding 
cross. It towers above the wrecks of time. If 
that had gone all had gone. We could not have 
replaced the cross. We can build new churches, 
new homes, and new businesses, but not a new 
cross. If the Saviour had perished, all had 
perished. If it had not been for the vision of 
Him I should have gone out of the advanced 
dressing-station and wept when, on that Satur- 
day, I saw the wounded come back to us in such 
numbers that they had to lie down by the way- 
side and wait for us to deal with the worst cases 
first. I had seen them march out singing a few 
hours before, and to see them come in wounded 
so soon after would have broken me down had 
I not seen a vision of Christ broken on the cross 
and saving the world by His bleeding wounds 
and cruel death. Well I knew that the lads 
who had gone over the parapet to their death 
had seen through the hail of bullets and shells 
the vision of the crucified Christ welcoming 



The Untouched Cross 115 

them with outstretched arms. After the last 
Sacrament before the battle one of them said 
to me, ' If I fall, write and tell mother that I 
died trusting in Christ and at perfect peace.' 
The old world lies in ruins at our feet, but the 
cross stands untouched, and we shall build our 
new and better civilization round the cross. 



XVI 
THE BELLS OF MAUREPAS 

IT was the ' Tanks ' day out. We had made 
their acquaintance some weeks before. In a 
quiet place well behind the line our division 
and the * Tanks ' had gone through a rehearsal 
together. We had, metaphorically speaking, 
been allowed to look up the conjurer's sleeve be- 
fore the show began, and were pledged to se- 
crecy. But the day had now come for Sir 
Douglas Haig to play his trick on the enemy, 
and he emptied his sleeve with a vengeance. We 
had watched the monsters assembling for some 
days, and one night, when lost, I had been 
guided as to my whereabouts by the clack, clack 
of a 'Tank,' and had been entertained to sup- 
per In the 'Tank' officers' tent. While the 
'Tanks' were going over the parapet and 
unconcernedly shuffling across ' No Man's 
Land,' belching forth fire and smoke, I was 
searching for one of my regiments. It was not 
in the battle, but in a reserve trench with the 
rest of the division, awaiting eventualities. 

116 



The Bells of Maurepas 117 

Even guides go astray on the Somme, and there 
I soon found that I had a genius for getting 
lost. If there are two tracks (and there are 
twenty-two, or more) I almost inevitably take 
the wrong one. On this day I was thoroughly 
lost, and coming upon a sergeant who was shel- 
tering his ammunition wagons behind a low hill, 
and allowing them to go to the guns but one at 
a time, I asked the way. He was a very intelli- 
gent man, and spoke with confidence. I had 
to continue the road into the valley, climb the 
hill on the other side, and a few hundred yards 
beyond the crest I should find the regiment. 
Of course, he was mistaken. They always are. 
When lost on the Somme one should never 
ask the way. It is better to grope for it if you 
cannot find an officer with a map. Tell a 
Tommy where he has to go, and by some mys- 
tic method he inevitably arrives there, but he 
neither knows nor cares what lies a yard beyond 
or to the right or left of him. His work-a-day 
philosophy seems to be, ' One step I see before 
me. 'Tis all I need to see.' There is some- 
thing uncanny in his superb indifference to all 
that lies outside his own well-defined duty. Yet, 
when you are lost, he, in the largeness of his 
heart, takes pity on you. He will not confess 
his absolute ignorance, for that would make you 
feel more lost than ever. He therefore guesses, 



118 The Bells of Maurepas 

and guesses wrong, as you afterwards find out. 
In the teeth of all former experience I trusted 
the sergeant's directions. On the other side of 
the valley I passed through the French bat- 
teries. The gunners joyfully informed me that 
the English were advancing, and bade me look 
through their glasses at the smoke-enveloped 
battle-line, and at the cavalry in the rear. The 
French were more excited and joyful than Eng- 
lishmen would be even if they were beholding 
the German Army jumping into the Rhine in 
the wholesale manner of the Pied Piper of 
Hamelin's rats. At last I reached the hill-top, 
and found to my amazement that I was in 
Maurepas, the village next to Combles. I tried 
to make a French officer understand where I 
wanted to go, but he seemed to regard me as a 
trophy — perhaps a spy — and asked me to fol- 
low him to the commander of the division. 
There I found an English major acting as 
liaison-officer. He introduced me to the gen- 
eral, and explained that I was a cure. They 
were watching the battle, and the major ex- 
plained to me the points already won. The 
smoke of battle obscured the view, but under 
Its pall the English Prime Minister's eldest son 
was dying, and many another of Britain's best. 
The major showed me the neighbourhood of 
our trench, and I made my way back into the 



The Bells of Maurepas 119 

valley. There I left the road and cut across 
country, taking cover where I could. In this 
way I reached the regiment quickly. 

At Maurepas I was amazed at the destruction 
that had been wrought. It was a heap. There 
was not a house or shed left standing. The 
tallest bit of wall left was not more than a yard 
high. Broken ploughs and reapers mingled 
with household utensils In Indescribable con- 
fusion. On the left of the road, as I returned, 
was the site where the church had stood. I 
needed no Informant, for there, like two huge 
pears, stood the church bells. They were about 
five feet In height, and of great weight. They 
were lying exactly as they had fallen when the 
steeple tumbled down. Of the church itself 
nothing remained, and but for the bells I should 
never have known anything of Its existence. 
The sparing of the bells was another of the 
strange freaks of war. The church had gone, 
but Its music lingered. 

In peace time, the music of the bells had 
floated out over the rolling downs and through 
the sleeping valleys that lie around the village. 
As the people ploughed the land, gathered in 
the corn, or tended their stock, the sound of the 
bells came to them as a voice from heaven. 
Daily, like the peasants in Millet's picture, ' The 
Angelus,' they had, at the call of the bells, 



120 The Bells of Maurepas 

bowed their heads and said an evening prayer 
ere the passing of the sun brought on the night, 
with its train of stars. On the first day of each 
new week they had left their fields at the sound 
of the music, and, donning their best garb, had 
sought in the church the absolution of their sins, 
and a fresh start. Mothers looking on the pic- 
ture of the Virgin and Child had felt a new 
sacredness In the duties of motherhood. Fathers 
had gazed upon the crucifix and become recon- 
ciled to a life of self-renouncing labour for their 
offspring. Children, with wondering eyes, had 
looked upon the picture of the angels surround- 
ing the ascending Lord, and felt the power and 
glory of the world to come. All had listened 
to the simple words of the village priest, and 
been reminded that they were but pilgrims, and 
must not set their affections too deeply on farm- 
stead or field, but on the things which are eter- 
nal and beyond the chances and changes of this 
mortal life. When Christmas had come the 
bells had rung merrily, calling to the farmers 
as aforetime the angels of Bethlehem had called 
to the shepherds, ' O come, let us adore Him, 
Christ the Lord.' Holy days had come and 
gone, but never without the bells calling the 
people from the toil of the fields to rest and re- 
joicings in home and church. When the chil- 
dren went to their first communion, or when the 



The Bells of Maurepas 121 

church's blessing was given to a bridal pair, 
how happily the bells rang! And how sadly 
when some old man finished his journey and 
went to his long home ! Back home old people 
and young children often die without any notice 
being taken of their passing. They just slip 
away like the birds in autumn. But in the dis- 
trict around Maurepas neither man nor child 
could pass away unnoticed and unlamented. 
The bells tolled the news to all, and expressed 
the sorrow of all. Now the church in which the 
old and young had prayed, bridal parties re- 
joiced, and mourners wept, was no more. Only 
the bells remained. But as 

Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory, 

so there abide the spiritual experiences to 
which the bells called. 

Our army in France is cut off from its 
churches as completely as if they had been de- 
stroyed. Yet the music of the church lingers 
in our memories. 'We don't like parades in 
which we are marched to and from the serv- 
ices,' said a youth to me; 'we like to walk to 
the services of our own freewill just as we did 
at home.' It is all * home.' They want the 
same order of service, and the same hymns and 
tunes as at home. They want nothing new. It 



122 The Bells of Maurepas 

is the old things and the familiar portions of 
Scripture which content them. Life is too un- 
certain for new things. They just hold on to 
the old. ' How nice it will be,' wrote one in a 
letter I censored, ' to be back in my old place 
in the choir.' The music of the sanctuary 
vibrates in their memory, and they share the 
feelings of the Psalmist as he wrote, 'When I 
remember these things, I pour out my soul in 
me : for I had gone with the multitude, I went 
with them to the house of God, with the voice 
of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept 
holy day.' After Holy Communion in a barn a 
Presbyterian officer came to me and said, ' It is 
a great happiness to have received the Sacra- 
ment this morning, because I am to-day being 
received Into the membership of our church at 
home, and my heart is there.' A little while 
back some fifty men came to a service In the 
corner of a field. At the close I asked all who 
wished to consecrate themselves to God to step 
forward and seal the covenant by partaking of 
the Sacrament. And all stepped forward. I 
have no doubt that every one of them was an 
old Sunday-school scholar. They responded to 
my appeal because the music of the old Sunday- 
school teachers' voices was still ringing In their 
hearts. Once I stood In BIshopsgate Street, 
London, watching the traffic, and listening to 



The Bells of Maurepas 123 

Its roar. Soon, however, I found myself listen- 
ing to another voice. It came from above, and 
was heard through the tumult of the street. It 
was the voice of the bells of Bishopsgate church, 
and they were singing to the busy and over- 
laden passers-by Sullivan's sweet melody, ' Lead, 
Kindly Light.' So here amid the horror and 
tumult of war, the sweet voice of the church 
' which we have loved long since and lost 
awhile,' comes to our hearts with healing 
power. One of our men told me that while 
out with a burial party he found in a shell-hole 
the body of a soldier who had died of wounds. 
In his hands was a Bible, and it lay open at the 
twenty-third Psalm. He had learned the Psalm 
at his mother's knee or in the Sunday school, 
and often he had heard it in church. Dying 
there alone in a shell-hole, with the battle rag- 
ing round him, the old familiar Psalm came 
back to his memory like the sound of distant 
bells. It was one of 



Those first affections, 

Those shadowy recollections, 

Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day. 
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence; truths that wake, 
To perish never ; 



124 The Bells of Maurepas 

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 

Nor man, nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy. 

The dying soldier was a boy again, and the 
battle was forgotten as he sank to rest In the 
arms of God. Out here we have to live on our 
memories, and draw upon the reserves we un- 
consciously laid by when children. Thus 

The thought of our past years in us doth breed 
Perpetual benediction. 

I have seen an officer In mid-years almost 
break down In tears because I casually quoted 
the children's hymn : 

Now the day is over, 

Night is drawing nigh, 
Shadows of the evening 

Steal across the sky. 

It appeared that for several years his mother 
had repeated the hymn to him every evening. 
In the hour of danger and death, or when the 
spirit is lonely, these things come back on us. 
It is the lingering music from the church of our 
childhood. Even Napoleon, Bourrienne tells 
us, wept one evening when he heard the bells of 
a village church. They reminded him too vividly 
of a little church in Corsica which he had at- 



The Bells of Maurepas 125 

tended when a boy. The churches of our child- 
hood may be destroyed, but not their music. 
The bells will still linger among the ruins. 

Some day new houses and a new church will 
be built at Maurepas, but it is the old bells that 
will ring in the steeple. They will be the link 
between the old and the new. The War cannot 
silence them for ever, and after its tumult, as 
before it, the bells will call the tillers of the 
ground to worship Him who is, 'from ever- 
lasting to everlasting God.' And when we come 
back to the home-land and the new Church, it 
is the old Bible and the old hymns that we shall 
want to hear. We shall listen for the old bells 
whose music came to us in a strange land and 
in valleys deeply shadowed. And we shall want 
to worship the adorable One who is * the same 
yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' for in the land 
of our journeyings the music of His voice has 
never failed us. 



XVII 

THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF 
MONTAUBAN 

I WAS riding on a motor-lorry from Guille- 
mont (where Raymond Asquith lies buried) 
to Carnoy; and It was evening. As we 
passed through Montauban I saw a strange 
sight on the right of the road. Poised, so it 
seemed, In mid-air, and about six feet from the 
ground, was a figure in white. ' What can that 
be?' I asked. In the twilight it looked like a 
ghost. Around the figure I could just discern a 
number of broken tombstones. And on each side 
of the road I knew there were many soldiers 
buried. Was it a spirit, some ancient cottager, 
revisiting the desolated village? Or could it be 
the ghost of some soldier? Surely not, for none 
ever sought a return to the Somme. Yet who 
could set a limit to the devotion of one who had 
died for his country? Might he not return to 
encourage the lads who were marching up to the 
trenches with fear and foreboding gripping at 
their hearts? Had not Moses and Elias re- 

126 



The Virgin Mother of Montauban 127 

turned to comfort and strengthen Jesus ere He ; 
left the Mount of Transfiguration for Calvary? 
Or was It some mother who could not rest in 
heaven while her boy took that terrifying road 
to Lesbeufs? Jesus had to come to us from 
heaven when we wandered in the wilderness of 
sin and suffering, and how often the angels have 
come to man in his need we shall never know. 
The Bible tells us of a few visits, but not of all. 
If the figure had been the sainted mother of one 
of the boys marching by, I do not think it would 
have given me much surprise; for I am sure 
heaven is ever very near us, and that there is no 
lock on the door to prevent a mother ministering 
to her boy when, in the hideous darkness that 
seems alive with shrieking fiends, his young 
heart beats against his ribs as though It would 
escape from the unspeakable horror. Or was 
the white figure some wife or mother from Eng- 
land? Had one left her sleeping body and 
slipped away to her love on the Somme? 
Where are we when our bodies sleep ? What are 
our souls doing? Can love find out no way for 
the soul to escape from Its prison house of flesh 
for a fleeting visit over the sea ? I have seen so 
many dead that I have come to think of lifeless 
bodies as I think of deserted houses. The own- 
ers have not ceased to exist. They have merely 
gone away. And when the body is not dead but 



128 The Virgin Mother of Montauban 

asleep, may it not be possible for the soul to 
lock up the house for a time and slip away? 
We are * fearfully and wonderfully made,' and 
live In a world where the spiritual is more 
potent than the material. We know not what 
is possible either to the living or to those we 
pronounce dead. 

As I sped past the figure I questioned what 
it could be; but there was none to answer. 
When Jesus came to His disciples walking on 
the sea, they thought He was a ghost, and were 
afraid. After the resurrection He came to them 
when the doors were closed, and in other mys- 
terious ways, and they were amazed, but not 
afraid. Could this figure be Christ? Even 
after his ascension he appeared to St. Paul. 
Might He not, in our hour of need, be appear- 
ing to us? We know that He is on the Somme 
as truly as we know the Prince of Wales is. A 
friend of mine, a cyclist orderly, told me that 
one day when he dismounted he found the 
Princes of Wales close beside him scrapmg the 
mud from a bicycle. The Prince has camped 
with his regiment close to my own, and a num- 
ber of our men have seen him go by on his 
bicycle. It Is almost certain that at one time 
or another I have passed him on the road, but 
because I was not expecting to see him, or 
because I did not realize how like an ordinary 



The Virgin Mother of Montauban 129 

man a true and gallant prince can be, I have not 
recognized him. In like manner many have 
failed to realize the presence of Christ; but that 
He is on the Somme is proved by many testi- 
monies. He has revealed Himself to men in 
their need, and ministered to them. Was this 
figure a manifestation of Him that none might 
doubt? Had He remembered the way of the 
Cross and come to cheer the brave soldiers as 
they went by to die ? Was He holding a review 
of those who follow in His train? 

Any of these surmisings I believed possible 
as an explanation of the figure, and yet I re- 
garded none of them as probable, for of human 
life beyond the body we have but little assured 
knowledge, and are almost entirely in the realm 
of faith, hope, and love. And in regard to the 
Divine Figure, we have not seen Him with 
mortal eyes. 

The day following I had to walk to Guille- 
mont, and as I passed through Montauban I 
suddenly came upon the figure again. The 
road was crowded with traffic, yet never a sol- 
dier passed without turning to look at this 
watcher by the wayside. By night and day 
multitudes have gazed upon it with astonished 
eyes. It is all that is left of Montauban. There 
IS not a house nor barn standing, and of the 
church there is not one stone upon another. 



130 The Virgin Mother of Montauban 

This figure, the figure of the Virgin Mary, is all 
that the War has spared. It is but a plaster 
cast resting on a slightly built trestle, and, seen 
by daylight, is in the traditional colours. Under 
the trestle lie t\YO ' duds ' — shells that have 
failed to explode. One is of the usual size, but 
the other is an immense fifteen-inch shell. The 
statue is slightly damaged at the back, but this 
is hardly noticeable. It had evidently been in 
the church, but how every building of brick and 
stone could be utterly destroyed by shell fire, 
and a statue of plaster be preserved, passes the 
Avit of man. The Virgin stands above the open 
graves and broken tombstones, gazing with 
downcast eyes towards the road where the sol- 
diers go marching by. Her hands are slightly 
extended in front of her as though in lamenta- 
tion. She stands like Rachel weeping for her 
children. 

There is not a living w^oman within many 
miles of Montauban. There is just this plaster 
statue of one. She has been left to remind the 
lads of the mothers at home who never cease to 
yearn over them and pray for their safety. The 
statue is the figijre of a mother, and a mother 
separated from her Son. In most pictures and 
statues of the Virgin Mother her Son is nestling 
in her arms. But this is the mother of His man- 
hood, He has left His village home and gone 



The Virgin Mother of Montauban 131 

out Into the world. She wonders how He Is 
faring. Is He well or ill? There is no post to 
tell her. Are men kind to Him or cruel? Oh 
that she could go to Him and protect Him as in 
His infancy ! Why could He not ha\ j remained 
a babe for ever? She would not have wearied 
with nursing, and only the approach of old age 
would have caused her dismay. She cannot rest 
In Nazareth. She must go up to Jerusalem. 
She has a sister, and it will be sisterly to visit 
her. Surely some premonition has warned her 
that Jesus is in danger, for can anything be 
hidden from a mother? Have they not special 
endowments of the soul? She finds Him, but 
the shadow of death is already upon Him. In 
helpless grief she stands beside His cross, and 
the sword that goes through His heart pierces 
her own. That is the statue left at Montauban 
— a mother without her boy, and searching for 
Him where the shadows of death fall thickest. 
It may not be any special providence that this 
figure of a mother has been spared where no 
living mother may come; but it looks like one. 
Thousands of those who pass by will never sec 
their mothers again in this world, nor even the 
picture of one. She is the last woman to be seen 
on the way through the valley of the shadow of 
death that begins at Montauban. She stands 
there as the representative of the world's 



132 The Virgin Mother of IMontauban 

womanhood, sorrowing over the noble men 
who are passing by Into the deepening shadow. 
While one gazes at her the roadsides seem to 
throng with the sad faces of mothers, each one 
of whom anxiously looks at the soldiers In the 
passing regiments to see if her own boy Is there. 
Strong buildings of iron and stone have been 
blown to fragments, but the frail Image of 
motherhood has survived. Iron shells can de- 
stroy buildings of Iron and stone, but they can- 
not destroy the love and solicitude of a mother. 
Love will follow even where it cannot save, and 
the dying are comforted by the sense of its pres- 
ence. It Is Inconceivable that In the wrestle with 
death love will be vanquished. With our Lord, 
who Is ' the resurrection and the life,' we shall 
surely meet our loved ones on the other side of 
the grave, and, looking back, say, ' O death, 
where is thy sting? O grave, thy victory?' 



XVIII 
THE OPEN CHURCH IN MAN'S LAND 

THIS is Man's Land. During the last few 
days I have seen scores of thousands of 
men. All were soldiers, and they repre- 
sented many races — British, Colonial, French, 
Algerian, Negro, and German. But for more 
than three weeks, though I have travelled many 
miles, I have seen no woman or child. This is 
no place for women and children. The work to 
be done is men's work. The sights to be seen 
and the sufferings to be endured are for men. 
There is no woman or child for miles around. 
They, thank God, are out of it. One half, and 
that the better half, of humanity is saved amid 
this wreck of the world. I have seen nothing 
even to suggest the presence of women, except 
that two nights ago a beautiful grey kitten stole 
into my tent at supper-time. It suggested a 
home somewhere near; but there was none. It 
came from I know not whence — a sort of angel's 
visit. We were both a bit lonely, I suppose, and 
soon became chums. When I lay down on the 

133 



134 The Open Church In Man's Land 

ground to sleep it crept into my sleeping-bag 
with me and stayed there till morning. Then 
It escaped, I know not whither. Probably some 
homesick fellow kidnapped it. Dogs we have 
In plenty. They are men's friends. But cats 
are women's friends, and in all this wide camp 
I have seen none but my little lost kitten. The 
tents, 'bivvies,' and wood fires all declare this 
to be Man's Land, as do also the petrol tins used 
as pans and kettles and the biscuit-tin hds used 
as frying-pans. 

The other night I walked into a little town 
some two miles away. In the market-place I 
stood for a long time watching the traffic. It 
was worth watching. Multitudes of mule — or 
pony — drawn limbers and motor-driven ammu- 
nition wagons rushed along in what seemed the 
most reckless fashion. The drivers were most- 
ly French and Algerian, though now and then 
an English wagon or cycle passed. The sight 
was thrilling, but there were no women at the 
windows and no excited children at the door- 
ways. The onlookers were all soldiers, mostly 
French. I was still in Man's Land. Behind me 
stood a church centuries old. Its stones had 
echoed to the tramp of many armies. The sol- 
diers of the past had perished, but it had sur- 
vived. I decided to enter. It never occurred 
to me that it might be closed. In France a closed 



The Open Church In Man's Land 135 

church is a rarity. On entering a village or town 
I always make for the church, and it is seldom 
indeed that I have been repulsed by a lock. But 
this church was in Man's Land, and we have 
been told times innumerable that churches are 
for women and children; that they are not for 
men — especially men of valour. Besides, 
Frenchmen are said to be atheists. Did not 
France, a century or two ago, produce an 
atheist called Voltaire? I ought to have re- 
membered these things, and I ought to have 
concluded that the door would be locked. But 
my memory is not good, and my instincts are. 
I therefore followed my instincts and tried the 
door. 

It opened, and I found myself in a beautiful 
old church. The light was dim, restful and con- 
ducive to religious meditation. The thick walls 
kept out both the sound of the guns and the 
noise of the madly rushing traffic of the street. 
A glance round revealed beautifully stained- 
glass windows, pictures, and plaster statues. A 
fine organ stood in the back gallery. There was 
a splendid central altar, flanked by simpler side 
altars, and the massive pillars gave the sides of 
the church the appearance of side chapels, and 
as such they are often used. I quietly took a 
seat; I was not alone, but I was unnoticed. Here 
and there was a French soldier in his war-worn 



136 The Open Church in Man's Land 

grey-blue uniform. How restful it was to sit in 
the softened light after looking on the hectic 
flush of the dying day! The door opened con- 
tinually and other soldiers entered, but no one 
turned to look, at them. The worshippers gave 
their whole attention to God. On entering, each 
soldier went up to the shell of holy water and, 
dipping his fingers in it, made the sign of the 
cross upon his brow and breast — reconsecrating 
to Christ brain and heart. Two come in to- 
gether, and I saw a beautiful expression of 
comradeship. The one nearest the shell dipped 
his hand in the water, touched with his wet fin- 
gers the hand of his comrade, and together they 
made the sign of the cross. They were com- 
rades in the trenches and comrades in the 
church. Having made the sign of the cross, 
each soldier entering knelt, on one knee, tow- 
ards the altar, and then stepped into a pew. 
There he sat for a time in quiet meditation, and 
then knelt in prayer. His act of worship com- 
pleted, he stepped back into the aisle, bowed 
towards the altar, crossed himself again, and 
left the church. Within half an hour I watched 
scores of soldiers enter, worship, and leave. 
There were no doorkeeper, no steward, no 
priest, no lights, and no books. The organ was 
silent. No one looked about, and no one uttered 
a word. They came to worship, and having 



The Open Church in INIan's Land 137 

worshipped they departed. No Quaker was 
ever more Independent of priest or preacher. 
Somehow the Roman CathoHc Church is a 
people's Church. Into the most gorgeous cathe- 
drals women enter on their way from market. 
They put their shopping bag on one chair and 
kneel on the next. Their devotions ended, they 
go home and cook the midday meal. Dirty, un- 
shaved soldiers, straight from the trenches, 
enter any church they see, by day or night, say 
their prayers, and pass on their way. 

I was about to leave when some one entered 
with two branching candlesticks of five lights 
each, and placed them on the side-altar nearest 
the door. Though many soldiers had left, the 
pews in front of me were filling. The priest 
entered, but the congregation did not stand. He 
entered as unobtrusively as the soldiers, and, 
like them, reverently knelt to pray. Then, still 
kneeling, he lifted up his voice in prayer. It 
was a rich, full baritone voice, and, instead of 
intoning, he sang the prayers. I did not under- 
stand a word, nor did I need to, for I under- 
stood his spirit and could share in his devotions. 
At the end of each prayer the soldiers sang the 
response, and my heart sang with them. These 
soldiers — some of them young lads, others 
bearded men — had come from many a scattered 
village or town in France or her colonies. Yet 



138 The Open Church In Man's Land 

without a book, and with no help but the organ, 
they were able to join in the responses. They 
knew both the music and the words, and there, 
in the twilight of the old church, in the very 
heart of a raging war, they sang like nightin- 
gales their evening prayer. After the prayers 
they sang a hymn. With the plaintive sweet- 
ness of a Welsh congregation they sang, and 
with the touching simplicity and fervour of re- 
vival services. The tears welled up in my eyes. 
There will surely be a revival of religion in 
France. There is a revival. That singing was 
a revival set to music. There was something in 
it that I have not heard, no, not in Israel; some- 
thing that touched the hidden springs of life. 
Deep called unto deep. The singers wore on 
their arms the braid that spoke of eighteen 
months or two years at the Front. They were 
not weak-kneed emotionalists, chough they sang 
with emotion. They were men who had de- 
livered Verdun and many a fair town of France. 
After the hymn there were the recitation of a 
creed, the elevation of the Host, more beautiful 
singing, and at last the Benediction. Then we 
passed out — they to their comrades in blue, I 
to my comrades in khaki, some of the dearest of 
whom laid down their lives but yesterday. 
Those French soldiers and I will never meet 
again here, but as surely as we are comrades in 



The Open Church in Man's Land 139 

arms so arc we comrades In Christ, and we shall 
meet above where there Is but one language 
and one Church. 

I picked my way through the traffic and mud 
and reached the tented fields. On my right 
roared the guns, while their flashes lit up my 
way like sheet-lightning. On my left were 
heaps of spent shells, and behind them twinkled 
innumerable little camp fires. The lads were 
cooking their evening meal. It Is less than a 
week ago, yet many of those lads are now lying 
still in death. They died yesterday, and many 
more go forth to die to-morrow. For the sec- 
ond time in one week they have ' to go over the 
top ' ' into the jaws of death, into the mouth of 
hell.' Many are unnerved by yesterday's hor- 
rors, but It Is 

Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do and die. 

This is Man's Land. But In Man's Land there 
Is a church with doors always open; and often 
among the tents there are heard the songs of 
praise and prayer, for In the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death man cannot live by bread 
alone. 



XIX 
COURAGE AND THE CURTAIN 

DURING the most deadly battle of the 
Somme campaign the regiments of our 
division had forced their way into the 
German trenches, and were holding on to them 
with desperate valour. As the hours wore on it 
became obvious that retirement was inevitable; 
but the men were out to win, and would not 
consider the possibility of failure so long as 
there was even a forlorn hope. The task of the 
runners between the regiments and their head- 
quarters was one of desperate adventure. In 
fact, the casualties were so heavy that messages 
had to be duplicated and even triplicated in 
order to ensure one getting through. It was 
with the utmost excitement, an orderly- 
room sergeant told me, that they watched the 
runners crossing 'No Man's Land.' One after 
another as the poor fellows handed in their mes- 
sages they fell down in a swoon, and had to be 
revived with brandy. One of them had picked 
up a German helmet in the captured trench and 

140 



Courage and the Curtain 141 

tied It to his waist. As he ran across * No Man's 
Land' and pierced the curtain of fire he was 
observed to be In a state of collapse, but each 
time when about to fall he glanced down at the 
helmet, placed his hand upon it, and staggered 
on. At last he reached the head-quarters, 
handed in his message, and fainted away. The 
helmet had reminded him of his friends at 
home, who would be proud of It ; of the trenches 
captured from the enemy, which must be held 
at all cost; and of his comrades left there In 
deadly peril. 

One of the messages brought through the 
curtain was from a captain who, by his marvel- 
lous courage and coolness, saved his company 
from utter disaster. It ran: * No bombs left. 
I have three alternatives. One, to stay and be 
wiped out; two, to surrender; three, to retire. 
One and two are distasteful to me. With your 
permission I will retire.' Still smoking a cigar- 
ette he handed the note to a runner, who dashed 
with It across ' No Man's Land ' to the colonel. 
The captain was without bombs because it was 
impossible to get them through the curtain. 
Three regimental companies of bomb-carriers, 
each numbering sixteen, had been wiped out. 
Rifles were useless, and the weary fighters had 
to return through the curtain of fire they had so 
gallantly pierced in the morning. During the 



142 Courage and the Curtain 

evening there was an attempt to bring in the 
wounded under cover of darkness, but the bom- 
bardment had been so terrible that some of the 
men had lost all strength of nerve. A doctor 
who had been decorated with the M.C. told me 
that when he called on a stretcher-bearer to 
follow him into * No Man's Land' the young 
fellow fainted away. lie called on another, and 
he also fainted. They were of no use, and he 
had to call on others. The stretcher-bearers 
are noted for their courage, but the curtain of 
fire which had hung all day over ' No Man's 
Land' had left little strength for the dangerous 
duties of the evening. One who was sent out 
to bring in a wounded man discovered when he 
bent over him that it was his own brother, and 
had a just reward for his courage. 

In the old wars soldiers grew accustomed to 
the whizzing of bullets or the rush of cannon- 
balls, and the nerves of veterans were scarcely 
Impaired. But no one can get used to the shell- 
fire of modern war. Shells are as terrifying to 
veterans as to new-comers. High explosives 
have a power to frighten such as is possessed 
neither by rifles nor machine-guns. The shell 
rushes at you with a piercing scream, but so 
swiftly that it cannot be seen. It bursts with a 
horrible crash, scoops out a deep crater, and 
scatters the soil and its own fragments far and 



Courage and the Curtain 143 

wide. A thick cloud of green, white, or black 
smoke rises above it, and fills the air with the 
smell of powder. I have seen a grave in which 
were buried the twenty-six victims of a single 
shell. Even when no one is hit the shell carries 
dismay to those near enough to see it burst, for 
no one knows where the next will fall. The 
average dug-out is no protection against a direct 
hit, and in deep dug-outs there is danger of be- 
ing buried alive. After long exposure to such 
dangers men are apt to lose their nerve and be- 
come wellnigh worthless. To guard against the 
danger of demoralization regiments are taken 
out of the line for regular rests in billets, and 
* leave ' to go home is given as often as possible. 
During an offensive divisions cannot be used 
with success for more than short periods. New 
divisions must relieve them so that they may 
make good their losses, and, what is more im- 
portant still, recover their nervous force. To 
rest men is to save them as effectives. The 
army which is compelled to keep its men longest 
in the trenches and opposed to the heaviest shell- 
ing will have the greatest wastage in sick, and 
will sooner or later become utterly demoralized, 
for shell-fire is insupportable for long periods, 
and is becoming increasingly intolerable as the 
War proceeds. You cannot kill or wound a 
whole army, but you can frighten one, and when 



144 Courage and the Curtain 

it is sufficiently frightened it either runs or sur- 
renders. The aim of battle, therefore, is to 
frighten the enemy, and for this purpose there 
is nothing to equal high-explosive shells. Mere 
shell-shock incapacitates men, and sometimes it 
even carries death. In one of our trenches after 
the explosion of a shell a young officer quietly 
fell over on his side, dead, although quite free 
from wounds. One of our doctors told me that 
as he entered Combles he saw a youth lifted high 
into the air by the force of a shell. On examin- 
ing the body a few minutes later he found it 
quite dead but without the slightest mark of in- 
jury upon it. Men cannot listen to and see 
bursting shells month after month without the 
exhaustion of their nervous force. The bravest 
of the brave will become timid, and the veteran 
will be more affected than the new-comer. When 
men are called upon to dash over a stretch of 
ground upon which the enemy is concentrating 
all his guns so as to form a veritable curtain of 
fire, they must be more than brave; they must be 
fresh. My own division was taken out of the 
line for three months before being thrown into 
the fighting on the Somme. The British soldier 
is confident in his cause, in God, and in himself. 
After proper resting he will dash through the 
thickest curtain of fire ever formed, and snatch 
victory out of even the jaws of death. All are 



Courage and the Curtain 145 

not equally brave, but the average of courage is 
Incredibly high. The charge of cowardice is 
extremely rare ; and if some fall short of all that 
is expected of them, it is not for us who have 
never faced the curtain to judge them. They 
are all volunteers, and we must remember the 
heroic resolve which brought them out. If 
sometimes the body fails to second the will, we 
must neither be surprised nor censorious. Those 
who have been through the most and have shown 
the greatest courage are ever, I have noticed, 
the last to speak unkindly of those who fail. 
Cases of even comparative failure are few, 
while cases of astounding courage have almost 
ceased to surprise. One of the sergeants of the 
Westminsters who was ordered to remain in re- 
serve during the fight of July i had the audacity 
to persuade another sergeant, who had to go 
over the top, to exchange places with him. 
Three times he went to the company commander 
and pleaded with him to sanction the arrange- 
ment. Permission was refused, but he found 
his chance in later battles, and before the end 
of the summer had won the D.C.M. On the 
other hand, a doctor told me of a youth who 
shrank from the ordeal, and tried to get out of 
it by feigning illness. The attempt was a fail- 
ure, and he was called upon to do his duty. The 
day after the battle there was a short truce, and 



146 Courage and the Curtain 

the doctor went over into ' No Man's Land ' to 
gather in the wounded. To his dismay the first 
dead body he saw was the body of this youth. 
He had 'made good,' and died a hero's death. 
' If you have a stretcher left when you have got 
in the wounded, carry back this body,' he com- 
manded the bearers. It was done and the soldier 
who had at first shrunk from the fight and then 
faced it was given special burial; but none knew 
why save the doctor. When one remembers that 
the prodigies of valour daily seen on the Front 
are performed by just ordinary men, such as we 
used to see on football-grounds, or in city offices, 
workshops, and churches, a new faith in human- 
ity and its future is begotten. Men are greater 
than we thought, and the soul has triumphed 
over the body to a degree undreamed of. The 
courage is not brute courage. The body trem- 
bles and afraid. It is pushed on through the 
curtain of fire by the soul within. I have spoken 
with many heroes, but never with one who was 
without fear. The strongest-nerved and stout- 
est-hearted men in the Army tremble as they 
cross 'No Man's Land' through a barrage of 
shells, but they force themselves on at the leis- 
urely pace ordered beforehand, and take the 
enemy trenches or die. It is a fact of immense 
spiritual significance and hope. Men faint away, 
but do not run away. They force themselves 



Courage and the Curtain 147 

through the inferno of fire as Livingstone 
forced his weakened body through the fever- 
haunted swamps of Africa, and perhaps at last 
faint away as he did into the arms of death. 
This spiritual courage is the doom of war. 
While men were little better than animals the 
ordeal of battle sufficed, but now that the soul 
has won such complete ascendency over the 
body it is inadequate and excessively costly. 
New methods of settling differences and of win- 
ning power and prestige must be found. This 
may well prove the last of wars amongst great 
nations, for the courage of the average man is 
as the Star of Bethlehem leading the wise on- 
ward through the night to the reign of peace. 
Men are feeling the need of something bigger 
than war for their energy and valour, and they 
will find It in the battle against poverty, suffer- 
ing, ignorance, and sin. 



XX 

THE FALLING STATUE OF ALBERT 

THE regiment was coming out of the 
trenches after fourteen days of hardship 
and danger in which neither officer nor 
man had washed or shaved or taken off his 
boots. With the stores and transport I was in 
advance of the regiment, and had reached the 
sandpit where our tent was to be pitched for 
the night. Evening was coming on, but it was 
still light, and my eyes were fixed on a town 
some two miles away. ' That is Albert,' said 
the quartermaster, joining me. ' Do you seethe 
statue of the Virgin on the top of the church 
tower? The dome of the tower has been hit 
by a shell, and the statue has fallen towards the 
streets. It is said that the people of Albert be- 
lieve that when the statue falls to the ground 
the War will end.' Even from the sandpit, two 
miles away, I could see the statue hanging over 
the street as if falling, and I determined to visit 
the church at the first opportunity. 

Next morning I cycled into the town, and, 

148 



The Falling Statue of Albert 149 

leaving my bicycle in the central square, walked 
towards the church. It is known as La Basilique 
de Notre-Dame de Brebieres, and is a magnifi- 
cent building in the Byzantine style. I found it 
in ruins. Hundreds of shells had been hurled 
at it, and windows, walls, and roofs had all alike 
been shattered. The tower could hardly keep 
its balance, so much had been blown away. 
Barbed wire barred the entrance lest falling 
stones should carry death to the unwary. Never- 
theless one could see something of the desola- 
tion within. The Germans had turned a sanc- 
tuary into a death-trap. In that stark, staring 
ruin of what was once so good and fair we see 
something of the baneful moral and spiritual 
significance of modern Germany. The homes 
around the church were all empty and In ruins, 
for when the church is destroyed there can be 
little security for the home. I entered some of 
the houses and walked from basement to garret, 
but there was no patter of little feet and no 
sound of feasting. The women had taken their 
children and household goods to some place of 
safety, and had not troubled to close the doors 
behind them. The men had woven barbed wire 
about their church that the holy place might re- 
main untouched until their return — if they 
should return. Then they had taken their rifles 
and gone after the desolater of their sanctuary. 



150 The Falling Statue of Albert 

There will be no return and no rebuilding of 
home or church until the evil-doer has been 
brought to justice, and life and well-being have 
been made secure. I have seen the gleaming of 
the French bayonets on the desolated fields of 
the Somme. They were forged in the home 
fires and altar fires of their ruined towns, and 
they will go deep into the hearts of the invaders. 
The sword that drove Adam out of Paradise 
never gleamed more terribly. The steel is 
tipped with the vengeance of heaven. Were 
Germany's soldiers innumerable as the sand 
they could not face the gleaming eyes and bayo- 
nets of France. It is not France that Germany 
is up against; it is God. The names Louvain, 
Ltisitania, Lille, and Rhelms are but a modern 
rendering upon Germany's walls of ' Mene, 
Mene, Tekel Upharsin.' 

Yet the blasted church and the ruined homes 
around it were not the things that impressed my 
Imagination most. Such sights are common in 
France, and I have seen them almost daily for 
months. It is the statue on the top of the tower 
that draws all eyes. There is nothing quite like 
it on any front. The tower Is of great height, 
and before the War the statue stood upright on 
the dome. It Is the figure of the Virgin Mary 
holding above her head the infant Jesus. He 
was held by her high above the town, as if to 



The Falling Statue of Albert 151 

receive the worship of mankind, and His arms 
were outspread in blessing. It was an attitude 
of triumph. Then the War came, and the statue 
fell over, and ever since it has remained hanging 
half-way over the street, so that passers-by see 
above them the outspread arms of Jesus. To 
some it is the picture of a falling Christ. To 
others it is the picture of a Christ who stoops to 
bless the oppressed and afflicted. In a recent ar- 
ticle Mr. Arnold Bennett, the novelist, wrote : 
'The War has finally demonstrated the authen- 
ticity of an event which, in importance, far tran- 
scends the war itself — namely, the fall of the 
Christian religion.' The words are perhaps 
hardly worth quoting, because in the same ar- 
ticle Mr. Bennett makes a self-revelation which 
sends down the value of his opinion on religious 
matters to zero. He declares : ' My curiosity 
about a future life is intermittent and mild. It 
never inconveniences me. I shall stick to life as 
long as I can, but the prospect of death gives me 
no moral or spiritual qualm. I have no super- 
natural religion, and I never had one. I do not 
feel the need of a supernatural religion, and I 
have never felt such a need.' 

Seeing, therefore, that he is totally without 
experience of, or curiosity about, the Christian 
religion, his judgment on it has no more value 
than a criticism of his novels of the Five Towns 



152 The Falling Statue of Albert 

by a Chinaman who has never been out of his 
native land. I quote his words, therefore, not 
because of their intrinsic value as an opinion, 
but because he is well known, and states his view 
with a baldness and vigour such as only those 
can who either know everything or nothing 
about their subject. The words serve as an ex- 
pression of the doubt which has come to some 
who have even had considerable experience of 
Christianity and have a great ' curiosity about 
a future life.' Most of us felt alarmed for 
Christianity when the War broke out. We were 
alarmed as the good Catholics of Albert were 
when they saw the statue of the Virgin and Child 
fall from its upright position. It seemed as If 
it were falling to the ground. If Christ ruled on 
high, could such atrocities happen in Belgium? 
Could It be possible that we had been mistaken, 
and that Christ still slept in a Syrian grave? 
Were not the outbreak and continuance of bar- 
barism a sign that Christianity had failed? 
Then came the magnificent and voluntary rally 
to the flag in defence of Belgium. As we saw 
our young men march out to die for others, 
freely and without compulsion, we saw again the 
cross on Calvary, and we knew that Christ was 
sleeping in no Syrian grave, but dwelling In the 
hearts of our gallant brothers, and Inspiring 
them to follow in his steps. The glorious rally 



The Falling Statue of Albert 153 

to the defence of liberty, justice, truth and hu- 
manity dwarfed In its sensationalism the lapse 
into barbarism. Never before had so many of- 
fered to die for the ideals of Christianity. We 
saw that Christianity had stooped from the sky 
to the street. It had become incarnate. Chris- 
tianity was no more a thing high and remote 
from men, something merely Ideal and worthy 
of homage. It had become a practical thing, 
something to live and die for. We could not 
pass along the commonest street without seeing 
a vision of the Babe who came to bring peace 
and goodwill to men by living and dying for 
them. Christ had not fallen. He had stooped, 
and stooped In order to bless. When something 
of Belgium's sorrow came on us, and the blinds 
of our windows were drawn, we ceased to look 
for a Christ remote and distant; we found Him 
by the vacant chair, and kissed the pierced hands 
that brought to us the peace of God. 

Our regiment had lost heavily in the fighting 
at Leuze Wood, and, after two days' rest, was 
returning to the attack. I therefore held a ser- 
vice on the ground where It had bivouacked the 
night before, and gave the men a few words of 
Christian comfort before they marched. At the 
close of the service a young Churchman — a can- 
didate for Holy Orders — came to me. Taking 
from his breast-pocket a worn and dirty copy of 



154 The Falling Statue of Albert 

Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven, he told 
me how, In the last battle, he had been cut off, 
and compelled to shelter in a shell-hole, and 
wait for the night to enable him to crawl back 
to his regiment. During those five hours of 
terrible suspense he read The Hound of 
Heaven, and In Its assurance of God's love 
found the comfort and strength he needed. If 
ever a place seemed forsaken of God It was 
Leuze Wood, or, as the men called It, Lousy 
Wood, on the day of battle. It was hidden 
by the smoke of bursting shells, and it seemed 
Impossible that any who had entered it would 
ever return. Yet like a ' hound of heaven ' the 
love of God had tracked the young soldier to his 
shell-hole, and remained with him to the end. 
Sceptics sitting at home in comfortable chairs 
point to the shell-ploughed fields of the Somme 
as the burial-place of a fallen Christianity; but 
that Is not the view of the officers and men on 
the spot. There, amid the evidences of man's 
cruel hatred and greed, they realize most fully 
the presence of Christ and the love that made 
Him die for them. They cannot understand 
the mystery of God's providence, but they are 
assured of His presence and love. It Is there, 
too, that they are seen at their noblest. Often 
have they made me feel that I was In the pres- 
ence of men ' whose shoes I am not worthy to 



The Falling Statue of Albert 155 

bear.' And often has my faith been shamed by 
the faith and testimony of the wounded. It is 
at home and not on the Somme that men grow 
sceptical. ' You must just trust in God, and do 
your best,' I said to a group on the evening be- 
fore a battle. ' We shall not fail to do that, sir,' 
said one of them, upon whose breast was the 
ribbon of the D.C.M. 

They know that Christ has not fallen, but has 
stooped to be nearer the timid and wounded and 
sorrowful. Their favourite hymn on the Somme 
was: 

When I survey the wondrous cross 
On which the Prince of Glory died, 

My richest gain I count but loss, 
And pour contempt on all my pride. 

See from His head. His hands, His feet, 
Sorrow and love flow mingled down; 

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, 
Or thorns compose so rich a crown? 

They realize that ' in all their afflictions He was 
afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved 
them. 



XXI 

THE MEN OF THE LIMP 

THE falling statue at Albert is worthy of 
study, for the sculptor was a thinker. His 
work is called * The Virgin of the Limp,' 
because the Madonna he has chiselled is lame. 
The sculptor has made the figure of Christ per- 
fect, but he has deformed the Virgin by giving 
her a limp. Christ is perfect and pre-eminent; 
and as she holds her Son high above her for the 
world's admiration the Virgin seems to say, ' Not 
unto me, not unto me, but unto Him be all the 
glory.' Like John the Baptist, she proclaims to 
all who draw near, ' Behold the Lamb of God 
that taketh aWay the sin of the world.' She is 
but the candlestick. He is the Light. He is 
without blemish, but she is disfigured. The 
only glory the sculptor has given her is the glory 
of exalting her Son and Saviour. She is 'highly 
favoured ' and ' blessed among women ' because 
she has been appointed nurse to her infant 
Lord, and has responded to the call with hu- 
mihty and joy. To the privilege are attached the 

156 



The Men of the Limp 157 

pain and disfigurement of lameness. She up- 
holds and exalts Christ, but the strain causes 
lameness. Possibly the sculptor knew from 
experience something of the self-sacrifice of 
mothers, for he has given the Madonna the true 
spirit of motherhood. She has crippled herself 
for her Son. Had the Virgin kept Jesus strained 
to her breast and hidden from the world, she 
would not, in the statue, have been lame. But, 
unselfishly, she holds Him aloft, for He is not 
only the Light of her own heart, but also the 
Light of the World. The strain has crippled 
her, but her deformity is her glory. 

The sculptor has preached better than he 
knew. His statue in the heart of the Somme 
has become more than the artistic expression of 
the unselfish service of the Virgin Mother. It 
has become the spiritual interpretation of the 
great struggle on the Somme front. Hundreds 
of thousands of French and English soldiers 
have looked up at the limp Virgin as they have 
marched through the shell-torn streets of Albert 
on their way to battle. A few days later many 
of them lay mangled and dead, while ambulance 
wagons came rushing back with the limp and 
maimed. A statue of a lame English soldier 
holding above his head, out of harm's way, a 
beautiful and perfect child would, to my mind, 
be the most perfect expression of England's 



158 The Men of the Limp 

part in this great struggle. I have heard of a 
frightened Belgian child who could not be lulled 
to sleep; but when a khaki-clad doctor entered 
the room, she stretched out her arms to him, cry- 
ing, * English, English,' and fell asleep on his 
breast. That is it. 

There are times when men can only ' enter 
mto life maimed,' and our soldiers have chosen 
maiming rather than stand outside the pale of 
honour and chivalry. One morning while home 
on leave I entered the refreshment-room at 
Euston Station to get some breakfast. A soldier, 
wounded in the arm, sat at the next table, and 
a little later a smiling youth in civilian clothes 
came limping in the same direction. The sol- 
dier quickly rose and lent him his unwounded 
arm. T was slow in understanding, and did not 
grasp the situation until the youth was seated. 
'Why do you limp?' I asked. He then told 
me of a great battle in which he had been 
wounded. Bullets had caught him in the arm 
and shoulder, and his right leg had been shat- 
tered. This, he told me, was his first day with 
an artificial leg; and he tapped it merrily with 
his stick. He was a bit clumsy at present, but 
would, he thought, soon get used to it and walk 
quite well. Later on I saw him limping down 
the corridor of the train. He was still smiling. 
He will play no more games, for his place will 



The Men of the Limp 159 

be with the old men when youth is at its sport. 
But he will still smile, knowing well that the 
children owe their unshadowed joy and freedom 
to his lameness. 

On my way back from England I breakfasted 
at Rouen with a young officer who had brought 
out a draft. He enlisted at fifteen, and went 
out to the Front as a private. There, 'carrying 
his pack on the long marches, he strained his 
heart. Later he was given a commission, but his 
father, a soldier in the trenches, wishes him to 
resign It on account of the weakness of his heart. 
He Is under age and can resign with honor, but 
his father will plead in vain. Such a youth is 
priceless; and later, as we stood together In the 
place where Joan of Arc was martyred, I 
thought him not unworthy to be compared with 
her. He has the heart of an Atlas, though not 
the strength, and we need not fear for the world 
while there are such to uphold it. His heart 
has a limp In It, but the hearts of our children 
will be unfettered and free. The present gener- 
ation has accepted maiming that it may lift the 
coming generation out of the fear and suffering 
of war. By their unselfishness these men of the 
limp have brought back our minds to the re- 
deeming work of Christ. They have given us a 
deeper Insight into the Atonement, and it will 
have a larger place In the thought and preach- 



160 The Men of the Limp 

Ing of the future. When we see them Hmping 
through our streets or Into our churches, we 
shall think of Him who trod the way of Calvary 
that we might tread the way of peace. 



XXII 
A DARK RIDE 

I WAS on my bicycle, and had reached the 
level-crossing of the railway. 'Halt! Who 
goes there ?' ' A friend — a chaplain.' ' Pass, 
friend; but put your light out.' 

In this land where a strange tongue is spoken 
it is always sweet to hear some lone sentry, 
hidden away in the folds of darkness, utter the 
comforting words, ' Pass, friend' — especially if, 
a moment before, he has startled you by his 
unexpected and threatening ' Halt ! ' He was 
England's guardian, and he called me 'friend' 
— England's friend. Yes, the words were 
sweet as words may be. 

But his other words, ' Put your light out,' 
were not sweet. A light for the path on a dark 
night in a foreign land is a pleasant companion 
to one who travels alone. Besides, I was par- 
ticularly proud of my lamp that night, and had 
put my trust in it. I have a strain of the ' Fool- 
ish Virgins' in me. Usually I take the lamp 
because it happens to be on the bicycle — but 

161 



162 A Dark Ride 

sometimes forget to take any oil either In It or 
with it. I had been on this road in the morning, 
however, and knew that I was ' tempting provi- 
dence ' by going on it at night. I had, therefore, 
seen that the lamp was trimmed for this journey. 
It was a httle wick lamp, filled with paraffin, and 
could not burn without smoking; but it gave a 
light, and, however modest, a light was precious 
on such a night. The sentry's demand filled me 
with despair. It was as if the stars had fallen 
into the sea. 

' Put out my light ! ' I exclaimed. 
'Yes, sir; no lights are allowed between here 
and the trenches.' 

' But,' I said, willing to face only one half of 
the facts, ' It's JBst from here onward that I need 
a light.' 

' Sorry, sir, but It can't be helped. Orders is 
orders.' 

It was the voice of the Inevitable that spoke. 
He was a private and called me ' sir,' but I 
knew I must obey him. Behind him stood all 
the might of Britain, and, dimly, he knew it. I 
might as well supplicate ' the man In the moon* 
as plead with him for the life of my little lamp. 
For privates and generals alike 'orders is 
orders.' We all come to the crossing where the 
light has to go out. A man Is a vain thing, and 
always coming up against something mightier 



A Dark Ride 163 

than himself to which he must bow— sometimes 
with smiles and sometimes with tears 1 blew 
out my light and looked into the darkness^ 
There was no moon. The upper air was filled 
with a wet mist that blinded most of the stars^ 
The few that peered through at the earth looked 
weak and watery, like the eyes of a drunkard. 
They would be of little use to a cyclist. 

Every few seconds bright lights waxed and 
waned in the distance. They were the beautiful 
star-shells that all night long light up No 
Man's Land.' They affect one strangely. 1 
have seen that 'No Man's Land' from the fir- 
ing-trench—peeping cautiously 'over the top 
and, afterwards, studying it more leisurely 
through a periscope. There I could see Mys- 
tery Wood,' where, in a great and unsuccessful 
battle, three British battahons disappeared and 
have never been heard of since. These bright 
lights were rising from near ' Mystery W ood. 
They were being sent up by the Germans, who 
are nervous at nights. But they seemed more 
like bright signals from the long-lost battalions. 
The lights were pure and bright as the memory 
of the dead, but I could not steer by them. 
Their gleams were too fitful. 

Yet I must on. On my bicycle I carried a 
Bible and hymn-books. I carried bread and 
w'mc. Away In the darkness was a barn, fire- 



164 A Dark Ride 

less and draughty. The air was damp and the 
wind bitter. But in the barn would be a few 
soldier lads waiting for that Bible, those songs, 
and that memorable bread and wine. I must not 
fail them. The previous Sunday they were in 
the firing-line, and could have no service. Even 
this morning, though I had called a service for 
nine o'clock, none had come, and I had waited 
in vain. All were on fatigue duties. The col- 
onel had warned me, but I had taken the risk. 
I must take the risk again. One or two hungry 
souls might be free to come to the feast, and the 
table must be spread. But I had no light for 
the way ! 

During the week a mother had asked me to 
make inquiries about her boy, who was reported 
'missing,' and believed to be killed. 'Please, 
sir,' she had written with an illiterate hand, 'I 
don't know what to do. I am a widow, and ill, 
and he is all I had.' It is but one of hundreds 
of such letters that have come to me. He was 
her lamp, her beautiful lamp, the lamp that was 
to light her to the end of her journey. She had 
counted on him to go with her as her eyes grew 
dim with age and her step feeble. He would 
be a ' lamp unto her feet, and a light unto her 
path.' But now his light was quenched; and as 
she looked into the darkness and thought of the 
way before her, the pitiful and piercing cry es- 



A Dark Ride 165 

caped her, ' I don't know what to do. .j >, ^.^ He 
is all I had,' Yet she must on. 

In the early part of the month I was In a night 
train taking my wife back to her home, from 
which I had to start for France a few hours 
later. And a minister in the other corner told 
me how his brother — a famous Greek scholar — 
had lost his son. The bullet had gone through 
the Greek Testament in the boy's breast-pocket. 
Before such a tragedy no words may be spoken. 
Yet the father must on. Though his lamp lies 
shattered, the road must be trod. There are 
eyes peering through the darkness for his com- 
ing, and ears that listen for a foot that is ' beau- 
tiful upon the mountains.' There are hearts 
that wait for his message and the bread and the 
wine he brings. ' Pass, friend.' 'TIs the voice 
of a private to a captain under the weeping mist 
that shadows a world. 

Perhaps while I was standing hesitant before 
the darkness that swallowed up the road some 
brother minister at home hid his face in his 
hands as he leaned over the table in the church 
vestry. It was time for the service, but the stew- 
ards kept silence. His soul was in the garden 
of sorrow, and they ' stood as it were a stone's 
throw from him.' Often he had looked Into 
the bright face of his boy, and whispered to the 
mother, 'At eventide there shall be light.' But 



166 A Dark Ride 

now he has come to the crossing, and the light 
has been quenched. May he not turn back home 
and be alone with his sorrow? Must he pass 
through that door into the church with its thou- 
sand eyes? 'Pass, friend,' whispered duty; 
* there are other stricken souls beyond the door. 
Take them your Bible and your songs, your 
strengthening bread and gladdening wine.' As 
he passed through the door some one's life 
brightened as he passed — some poor ailing 
widow who had known not what to do because; 
she had lost her all. 

It is not kings who govern us. It is the chil- 
dren we once were. Had the boy I used to be 
learned to cycle, I should have been an expert 
now. But the rascal did not; he went gathering 
flowers and watching fledglings In their nests 
instead, and I, the man, have to suffer for his 
negligences. But he has my forgiveness, for In 
my heart his flowers are still blooming and his 
birds singing. Like George Stephenson's 
' Rocket,' I do my best, but it's woe to the cow, 
or soldier, who gets in my way, as one of the 
men realized when I collided with him on the 
return journey. And it Is woe to me, for I am 
not a man of Iron. * Keep to your right,' called, 
approvingly, two soldierlike figures emerging 
from the darkness. ' Thanks,' I said as I passed. 
I was doing my best to keep the French rule of 



A Dark Ride 167 

the road, and was pleased to think they could 
see that my intentions, if not achievements, 
were good. The road had a hump like a camel, 
and if you missed the exact centre the tires 
slipped down the side of the hump, and you 
needed cat's feet to come to ground with. If 
you kept to the centre of the greasy road — which 
was as difficult as climbing a greasy pole — you 
would probably find, when it was too late, that 
some soldier was just as silently and swiftly 
cycling along the middle of the hump from the 
other direction; and a salvage corps would be 
needed to gather up the fragments that re- 
mained and decide which was soldier and which 
chaplain. If, to avoid giving the salvage corps 
more work, you kept to the right, then you 
cycled through an endless series of puddles, and 
the bicycle pitched and tossed like the troopship 
that carried you across the channel. On each 
side of the road was a deep ditch full of water, 
as in our own fen country. If, therefore, you 
missed the glint of the puddles and went a little 
too far to the right, you pitched Into the ditch, 
for there was nothing to keep you out except 
your predilections. 

I had not gone a hundred yards when I heard 
the unwelcome rumble of a wagon. It came 
looming out of the darkness with the slow, 
shuffling gait of a ' tank,' but it had none of the 



168 A Dark Ride 

' tank's ' cheerful ' clack, clack.' I rang the bell, 
and the shapeless hulk slunk nearer to the ditch 
on Its right. ' You are a born fool to take 
such risks,' I whispered to myself (by way of 
encouragement), as I dimly glanced at the space 
between the wagon and the ditch. I tried to 
steer a middle course, but the ditch water, how 
it gleamed! Memories of boyhood's catas- 
trophes overwhelmed me, and I recoiled from 
the water's glint as from an evil eye. My 
shoulder knocked against the rear wheel of the 
wagon, the bicycle staggered under the impact, 
and then, after a moment of ' philosophic doubt,' 
righted itself and pursued the uneven tenor of 
its way. ' That shall be a warning,' I muttered; 
' I will get off next time.' I did, but the vehicle 
turned out to be a limber, and it was narrow 
enough for me to have ridden past. ' I shall 
stay on next time,' I resolved. Who can know 
what is best for him? The old man knows, but 
his wisdom comes too late. His journey is done. 
He can convey his property to another, but not 
his wisdom. Wise words are not wisdom, ex- 
cept to the already wise. 

I had been sliding and pitching and tossing 
for some yards when, suddenly, the wheels, los- 
ing patience with one another, dissolved part- 
nership; the front wheel turning one way and 
the back wheel another. Catlike, I fell on my 



A Dark Ride 169 

feet, for I keep the bicycle seat low in anticipa- 
tion of such side-slips. But the left spring of 
the saddle was broken in the fall, and when I 
remounted the balance of the bicycle was dis- 
turbed, and I lived in fear and dread — like a 
man with one lung or a reduced stipend — of los- 
ing that which remained. 

At last I reached the barn. It was just behind 
the first-line trenches. The sharp crack of the 
machine-guns filled the air with a myriad sounds, 
and the beautiful star-shells lit up the sky. In- 
side the barn I found ten soldiers lads round a 
candle. 

'We are so glad you've come,' they said; 'we 
were afraid something had happened to you. 
We could not come this morning. We were on 
fatigue duties.' 

One of the lads had been present at the Sacra- 
ment before the last big battle, and had given 
me his mother's address. Another had heard 
me at the East Ham Mission in the days of 
peace. A third was from Boston, and a fourth 
from Thornton Heath. I got out my candles 
and we lit up the old barn. It was cold and 
draughty, so I put my coat on again. It was 
Sunday night, and about service time, and we 
thought of our people at home. 

I had just been home on leave, and on one of 
the Sundays the preacher had forgotten the lads 



170 A Dark Ride 

at the Front all day in his prayers. Forgotten 
these lads who were dying for him ! When I 
heard the Benediction, and knew that his last 
chance was gone, tears came into my eyes, and I 
wanted to be back with the lads who could be 
so great, though so forgotten. Never a service 
comes in which we forget to pray for the 
people at home. Can we forget that we have 
dear ones, and that they are not here? Wc 
thought of the old pew, the organ, the choir, the 
preacher. We sang the old hymns. We had no 
organ, but it was sweeter than the sweetest 
organ to hear those ten lads sing: 

At even, ere the sun was set. 

I spoke to them from the words, ' Can God fur- 
nish a table in the wilderness?' (Ps. Ixxviii. 19). 
Then we sang ' When I survey the wondrous 
cross,' and after prayer we gathered round the 
Lord's table to partake of the supper which He 
had spread for us, even in the wilderness. 



XXIII 
•ALL SEATED ON THE GROUND ' 

OUR regiments are serving short periods 
in the trenches followed by more restful 
periods in billets. When they are out of 
the trenches they are kept in reserve in some 
tiny village just behind the line, and are em- 
ployed on fatigue duties. Last Sunday two of 
my regiments were in billets, and, as they will be 
in the trenches next Sunday, I had to give them 
their Christmas sermon early. Both services 
were held in barns used as billets, but I will only 
describe one of them. There was no fire, and 
there were no seats. The place was draughty 
and the light dim. But what did we care ? We 
sang Christmas hymns; and we prayed for the 
people at home. Our Christmas will be happier 
than theirs, for they have to live in the old 
places, and go through the old festivities, with- 
out the old faces ; whereas here all is strange, and 
we listen for no light foot, and look at no fa- 
vourite chair or couch for one who is not there. 
After the third carol I asked them to make 
themselves as comfortable as they could for the 
171 



172 *A11 Seated on the Ground' 

sermon — for we give them sermons out here; 
they would not Hke it if we did not; it would 
not be like home. There was a minute or two's 
bustle and then they were quiet — ' all seated on 
the ground.' ' Now you are like the shepherds 
watching their flocks by night,' I said, and they 
laughed, for they are Londoners and hardly 
know a sheep from a goat; but it was a bit of 
' make believe ' such as they have indulged in by 
many a Christmas fire before this great trouble 
came upon the world. In Jack London's 
JVhite Fang there is a vivid picture of a camp- 
fire at night on the prairie. A few yards be- 
yond the fire the two travellers could, in the 
darkness, see innumerable pairs of shining 
eyes. The wolves could not be seen, only their 
eyes. In our barn the light was dim. The 
men were a mass of khaki, but their eyes shone 
like lamps on a dark night. Thinking of them 
now I cannot recall their faces with any vivid- 
ness. I just see against the blur of khaki scores 
of pairs of beautiful eyes. 

' I want to speak to you this morning,' I said, 
' about some of the principles upon which God 
governs this world of His. Turn to St. Matt, 
ii. 1 8, 19, and 20. "In Rama was there a 
voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and 
great mourning, Rachel weeping for her chil- 
dren, and would not be comforted, because they 



*A11 Seated on the Ground' 173 

are not. But when Herod was dead, behold, 
an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to 
Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the 
young child and His mother, and go into the 
land of Israel: for they are dead which sought 
the young child's life.'' 

'When the Herods die the angels appear. 
They have been close at hand all the time, hid- 
den within the shadows, keeping watch above 
God's own. 

The angels keep their ancient places; 

Turn but a stone and start a wing; 
'Tis our, 'tis our estranged faces 

That miss the many-splendoured thing. 

'We must never forget the powers of the 
world to come. There are forces about us 
that cannot be seen with the eyes. Moses 
made a nation out of a rabble, and led it 
through a vast wilderness of despair and fail- 
ure to the land of promise because he " endured 
as seeing Him who is invisible." You have 
heard of the angels at Mons. It is a legend, 
but it is the enshrinement of the truth. In this 
War we are on the side of the angels, and they 
fight for us. Elisha's servant, when he saw the 
enemy surrounding his master, lost all hope and 
yielded to despair. But when the eyes of his 
soul were opened he saw that the hills were 



174 'All Seated on the Ground' 

aflame with the rescuing angels of God. As 
Elisha's enemies were led away captive they 
felt a power they could neither see nor under- 
stand. Elisha understood because he was a 
seer, and had visions of the powers that lie 
behind this physical world of ours. When 
Christ was tempted forty days and nights of 
the devil In the wilderness there was nothing to 
see but the rank grass, the barren stones, and 
the wild beasts that prowled around Him, but 
when the temptation was ended we read that 
" angels came and ministered unto Him." They 
had been within call all the time, and you had 
to " turn but a stone and start a wing." Herod 
of old was a mighty man, and he left the women 
of Israel "nothing but their eyes to weep 
with." He pursued a policy of " frlghtful- 
ness," and there was none to oppose him, but 
just when his crown seemed secure from the 
infant "King of the Jews" he was slain. 

In our time a new Herod has arisen, and 
throughout Europe there are "lamentation, and 
weeping, and great mourning." Rachel is 
weeping for her children, and will not be com- 
forted because they are not. The new tyrant 
has seen the young babe Liberty, and knows 
it to be a king. He trembles for his crown, 
and has resolved that Liberty shall die before 
it can grow and gather strength. Before he 



*A11 Seated on the Ground' 175 

sent his soldiers against freedom-loving France 
he had told them that they might some day 
be called upon to shoot down his enemies in 
the Fatherland, for he looked upon his Social- 
ist subjects with growing distrust and dismay. 
Mankind, however, was not made for kings, but 
kings for mankind, and this is not the Kaiser's 
world, but God's. God Is still the "All High- 
est," and the nations of the earth are His fam- 
ily. Millions of Innocent men, women, and 
children have already been slain, and the end Is 
not yet. But the little child Liberty Is not 
slain; it is but exiled. As under the guidance 
of angels Joseph and Mary protected the little 
prince Jesus, so in the providence of God Eng- 
land and France are delivering the young child 
Liberty from the craft and cruelty of the king 
that would destroy it. When the great tyranny 
is past. Liberty will return to Europe and grow 
in strength and graciousness. It is a king un- 
der whose reign righteousness, and peace, and 
brotherhood will flourish. Our trust is not in 
ourselves nor In our carnal weapons, but in 

God the Omnipotent ! Mighty Avenger, 
Watching invisible, judging unheard. 

If we have not been mistaken about the right- 
eousness of our cause we cannot doubt Its tri- 



176 'AU Seated on the Ground' 

umph. With "heaven-erected face" we can 
say: 

God the All-wise ! by the fire of Thy chastening 
Earth shall to freedom and truth be restored; 

Through the thick darkness Thy kingdom is hastening; 
Thou wilt give peace in Thy time, O Lord ! 

So shall Thy children, in thankful devotion, 

Laud Him who saved them from peril abhorred, 

Singing in chorus, from ocean to ocean, 

"Peace to the nations and praise to the Lord." 

We must live in communion with the Unseen, 
and, through the dark months ahead, "endure 
as seeing Him who is invisible." Those whom 
we have left behind us on the Somme have not 
died in vain. They are as the morning star 
that ushers in the dawn. Their lives have been 
abridged that the lives of others, in countless 
numbers, may be enlarged and made glorious. 
Their unfinished work you have to carry on. 
Despite hardship and danger, 

Workmen of God ! lose not heart, 

But learn what God is like; 
And in the darkest battlefield 

Thou shalt know where to strike. 

For right is right, since God is God; 

And right the day must win; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 

To falter would be sin. 



'All Seated on the Ground' 177 

The little Child who came to us at Christmas 
has changed all life. He began a new era, and 
we do not count the years before Him. Each 
time you put the date on a letter you remind 
your friends at home that 1,916 years ago 
Christ gave the world a fresh start, and set m 
motion the noble influences which have made 
life, in your estimation, worth dying for. 
Herod sought to slay the DeHverer while yet 
a child, and throw the world back into the abyss 
of darkness. But Herod failed, and died, and 
when he was dead the angels appeared. Ever 
since we have greeted Christ's birthday with 
songs and feasting, for all that Is sweet and 
pure we owe to Him. The day Is not far dis- 
tant when the angel of peace will appear to us 
in France as one appeared to Joseph in Egypt. 
and announce that Prussian tyranny is dead, 
and that the life of an Infant Liberty is assured. 
We may still have doubts about the future, but 
they will prove as false as Joseph's fears of 
Herod's son. The part you have played in the 
triumph will never be forgotten. In all future 
ages men will speak of your deeds with rever- 
ence and gratitude, for they will remember the 
rights preserved by you, and the noble refornis 
and tendencies that came to birth and had their 
childhood during the great War.' 

The eyes were gleaming up at me out of the 



178 'All Seated on the Ground' 

khaki background — each pair the light of some 
home over the water. They are not the eyes 
that looked up at me in June from the daisy- 
spangled grass; and for many of these also I 
shall look in vain when a few more months have 
passed. When that time comes they will be 
looking on the angels that saved the Child, and 
on the Child that saved the world. 



xxiy 

POPPIES AND BARBED WIRE 

JUST behind the line where our men fought 
on July I there is a soldiers' cemetery which 
has become to me a garden of memories. 
It was a sunny morning when I first saw Its 
white crosses and scarlet poppies. I was on 
my way to the adjoining village to arrange a 
service for one of my regiments which had been 
billeted there for fatigue duties. There was 
no sign of a cemetery until one got in front of 
it, for the side view was obstructed. Suddenly 
rows of little white crosses glinting in the sun 
startled the sight, and awoke the imagination 
to scenes of battle and sudden death. The ap- 
peal of the crosses was irresistible, and I 
jumped off my bicycle to look at the names. 
There were soldiers from many counties lying 
there, and upon some cross might be a name 
familiar and loved. Who could tell? 

In the far right-hand corner a burial party 
was at work. I asked what had happened, and 
they told me. An hour before, the Germans 
had shelled the village, and four men had been 

179 



180 Poppies and Barbed Wire 

killed. At breakfast the four lads were happy 
and bright, eating heartily and laughing mer- 
rily. By dinnertime they were wrapped In 
their blankets and lying silent in death. At tea- 
time they were sleeping in the graves which 
comrades had dug for them. As I entered the 
village I saw the deep hole In the road where 
the shell had burst. There had been no time 
to fill it in, and I had to wheel my bicycle round 
it. The Sunday following we had our service 
on the stretch of grass within the cemetery. It 
did not seem a melancholy place for worship. 
Somehow death seems different out here. It 
looks more natural, for our burials have more 
of simple faith and less of pagan pageantry. 
We use no coffin, wear no black, shed no tears, 
and lay upon the graves no dying flowers. Our 
brothers fall asleep, we gently wrap them In 
their blankets, and lay them In their narrow 
beds. They are In God's keeping. It may be 
our turn next to ' go west.' But the day's work 
must be done, and the day's laughter found, ere 
the Last Post bids us retire for the night. We 
therefore held our services near our sleeping 
comrades, and felt no melancholy. We knew 
how they had died, and why. We did not think 
of them as dead, but as men who had ' done 
their bit' and were taking their rest. They 
were our ' great cloud of witnesses.' 



Poppies and Barbed Wire 181 

At the close of the Communion Service a sol- 
dier asked for a few minutes' conversation. He 
had not partaken of the bread and wine because 
he had not made his peace with God. A few 
days before he had been over the parapet, and 
amid the danger and tumult of battle had real- 
ized how unfit he was to be initiated into the 
mysteries of death and eternity. As the other 
lads wandered away we knelt down together 
on the grass. 'Almighty God,' we prayed, 
* Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of 
all things, Judge of all men; we acknowledge 
and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, 
which we, from time to time, most grievously 
have committed, by thought, word, and deed, 
against Thy Divine Majesty, provoking most 
justly Thy wrath and indignation against us. 
We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry 
for these our misdoings; the remembrance of 
them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is 
intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy 
upon us, most merciful Father; for Thy Son 
our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, forgive us all 
that is past, and grant that we may ever here- 
after serve and please Thee in newness of life, 
to the honour and glory of Thy name, through 
Jesus Christ our Lord.' Then in the presence 
of that silent congregation I gave to him the 
bread and wine. 



182 Poppies and Barbed Wire 

Other services followed, sometimes on Sun- 
days and sometimes on week-days. One Fri- 
day evening I was cycling to our old meeting- 
place, and marvelling at the beauty of the land- 
scape and its indifference to war. To the right 
and left stretched countless acres of corn-land. 
Various kinds of grain had been sown in great 
patches, and, as there were no hedges or home- 
steads, the landscape looked like a vast patch- 
work quilt of Nature's designing. Through 
the midst of it all, and in front of the cemetery, 
ran our second line of defence. Millions of 
yards of barbed wire had been twisted into an 
impassable network of spikes. If our front 
line gave way our soldiers were to retire behind 
the barbed wire, and the enemy, caught and 
held by the spikes, would be mown down like 
corn before the reaper, yet who could think of 
such things there? Shells fell in the distance, 
and sent up black clouds, but they were little 
heeded, and women could be seen working, half 
hidden, among the corn. There were scores 
of aeroplanes overhead, and two anti-aircraft 
guns by the road, but the sky was blue and the 
clouds of purest white. Larks had not ceased 
to sing. The barbed wire was a mass of green 
and scarlet, for the grass had grown unchecked 
all the summer, and innumerable poppies lifted 
high their heads as though to cover with their 



Poppies and Barbed Wire 183 

beauty the ugly and threatening spikes. In the 
cemetery itself poppies were fluttering their 
crimson wings over every grave. Out of the 
blue sky, at any moment, might leap the thun- 
derbolt of death, and no soldier moved about 
without a helmet. Were not the four graves 
In the corner reminder enough? Yet it was 
impossible to realize the nearness of war and 
death. The poppies were too beautiful. They 
were real, but the War seemed a dream of the 
night. 

Only one of my lads could come to the serv- 
ice. Some were out on fatigue duties, and the 
rest were going out with the night-digging 
party. The youth who came was a teacher who 
had been trained at our Westminster College. 
He had served In Gallipoli, and belonged to 
the division known as ' The Incomparable.' To 
France he had come just in time for the great 
offensive, and had survived where many had 
fallen. We passed within the gate, and, kneel- 
ing on the soft green grass before the rows of 
white crosses, I gave to him the sacred bread 
and wine. It was his first Communion in 
France. And there, walking among the pop- 
pies, we found Him whom Mary In the Garden 
of the Sepulchre had called ' the Gardener.' 
We forgot the War and the bitterness of death. 
*0 death,' we could say, 'where is thy sting 2 



184 Poppies and Barbed "Wire 

O grave, where is thy victory?' It was tHe 
youth's last Sacrament, though we knew it not 
then. Now he, too, sleeps with his comrades, 
but farther south. When the summer comes 
the popples will come and cover him, as they 
cover the lads in the garden where he last drank 
of the wine of God. 

Poppies are the flowers of forgetfulness — 
the flowers of sleep and pleasant dreamings. 
And they bloom luxuriantly on the French 
front. 

It is a mistake to suppose that the lads In 
France are in a state of constant distress and 
fear. They have times of terror and suffering, 
but they have also times of laughter and song. 
There is the barbed wire, but it is often over- 
grown with poppies. There are, on the whole, 
no men so cheerful as the men at the Front. 
They are simply full of laughter and good 
spirits. Often I hear shouts of laughter, and 
turn Into a billet to see what the joke is. ' Oh, 
sir,' said one merrily, ' they're laughing at my 
mouth; they say It is like a suet pudding.' The 
joke does not need to be a good one to raise 
laughter, for their hearts are full of merriment, 
and, like full pails of water, easily overflow. 
It is their compensation for the hardships and 
dangers they undergo. Even to the trenches, 
or to battle, they set off from their billets with 



Poppies and Barbed Wire 185 

shouting and laughter. Who else have such 
a right to laugh and be careless? Have they 
not offered their all — laying it upon the altar? 
Some at home are troubled at this laughter, and 
fear their boys do not realize that they may sud- 
denly be swept into eternity. But it is not so. 
There is hardly a boy ever goes into battle who 
does not beforehand give his mother's address 
to a chum. They have seen and heard too 
much not to meditate seriously on the nearness 
and meaning of death. Yet they set out to 
meet it laughing. And why not? Is God so 
very terrible? He is not some pitiless mon- 
ster of righteousness! He is a Father! And 
may not a child rush into a Father's room with 
shouting and laughter? I think our soldiers' 
laughter is due to a deeper faith than ours. 
They know the truth, and the truth has made 
them free. 

Whether we go to God laughing or trem- 
bling depends on our conception of God. If 
He is a slave-driver we shall be beaten with 
many stripes for every offence; but if He is a 
Father He will know our frame and remember 
that we are dust. A father told me some years 
ago that he had been too stern with his children, 
and they had become afraid of him and dared 
not laugh or be themselves in his presence. It 
was a great sorrow to him. He wanted to be 



186 Poppies and Barbed Wire 

a father and friend to them, but they could 
only think of him as a stern judge. Our sol- 
diers do not go to death thinking of God as a 
Judge, but as a Father. They tell me that as 
they go over the parapet they ' just trust in God 
and try to do their bit.' They see the grave, 
but they also see the poppies of His planting. 
They feel that God will forget and forgive, 
like every true father. He may be more than 
a father, but He cannot be less. This con- 
ception of God is the soldiers' wreathing of 
poppies over the barbed wire of suffering and 
death. 

And is there no poppy of peace to allay the 
anxiety and heartache of our friends at home? 
' I wish,' said a wife to her husband, as he re- 
turned to France, * I wish I could go to sleep, 
and not wake again until this terrible War is 
over, and you come back to me.' The barbed 
wire of war lacerates her heart, and the pain 
is wellnigh intolerable. Is there no heavenly 
poppy, no divine opium, for such suffering 
ones? There is. It is a poppy of Christ's 
planting. ' I will not leave you comfortless. 
/ will come to you. Peace I leave with you, 
My peace I give unto you. Not as the world 
giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be 
troubled, neither let it be afraid.' A peace 
that transcends the understanding is given, and 



Poppies and Barbed Wire 187 

it cannot be taken away. The soul can say, 
'What time I am afraid I will trust in Thee. 
Nay, more. ' I will trust and not be afraid.' 
Though Death strikes the loved one in the field, 
the bereaved soul is still unafraid, both for her* 
self and him. She finds the deeper peace that 
comes only to those who, at the call of the High- 
est, have sacrificed what they would like most to 
have kept. There comes the peace of Christ. 
Wars are made by men, but the Poppy of Peace 
is planted by God. The soldiers find it among 
the barbed wire, and the mourners will find it 
upon every grave. 



XXV 

THE ROSE IN THE SKY 

A FEW days before Christmas I was walk- 
ing down a communication-trench just 
as a heavy bombardment was ceasing. 
It was near four o'clock, and the sun, a deep 
red, was almost touching the horizon. A Ger- 
man shell burst some little distance away, high 
in the air, and formed a black ugly cloud. 
Slowly the rays of the sinking sun penetrated 
the cloud of smoke and turned it to a faint pink. 
As the pink deepened to rose, the cloud ex- 
panded under the influence of the soft wind, and 
within a few moments was transformed into a 
thing of beauty. It hung poised in mid-air, like 
a rose unfolding its fragrant petals, over the 
entrenched army. 

The black cloud was of man's making, and 
revealed his hatred and spite; but its trans- 
formation into a thing of beauty and peace was 
God's doing, and revealed His love and good- 
will as truly as did the rainbow to Noah. God's 
glorious sun, as it set in blood, turned man's 
cloud of war into heaven's rose of peace. Like 

188 



The Rose in the Sky 189 

the sun, God is at once near and afar off. 
He ' sits upon the circle of the earth,' and gilds 
our life with His own glory. Our black clouds 
He turns into roses and our curses into bless- 
ings. Man shoots his bolt and wreaks his 
wrath, and there seems none to hinder; but the 
last word is God's, and His the last act in our 
' strange eventful story.' He is the mother 
who tidies up after the children have gone to 
bed. He is the master who touches up his 
students' pictures. Our black smudges He 
transforms into summer roses. Only to do 
good has man unlimited freedom. When he 
would do evil God is present to restrain and 
overrule. ' He makes the wrath of man to 
praise Him; the rest of it He doth restrain.' 
The War is an evil of man's making, but God 
will infuse it, has already infused it, with His 
own goodness. The world will be better after 
it than before it, as the sky was more beautiful 
when the shell-cloud had been transformed 
than it was even before it burst. 

The shell-cloud was rosy because the sun 
was blood-red to a degree it seldom is. On 
Christmas morning we had a crowded service 
in a barn behind the line. For our prayers we 
used the Litany, and for our praises we sang 
Christmas carols. I had just prayed that we 
might be delivered from 'battle, murder, and 



190 The Rose in the Sky 

sudden death,' and was reading the first verse 
of a carol, when a runner pushed his way 
through the men and handed me a note from 
one of my regiments in the trenches. Two of 
our men had been killed, and I was asked to 
arrange for their burial. Tn the afternoon I 
buried the two lads and two others beside them. 
A company commander, one of his lieutenants, 
and a number of men came to pay respect to 
their memory. As we walked away the cap- 
tain asked, ' Why does not God stop this fear- 
ful slaughter?' I could not answer. Nor 
could I say why the sun was blood-red as it sank 
a few days before. But I know the black shell- 
cloud turned rosy because the sun was red. And 
I know that the world's liberties are being saved 
because those four lads are lying in a soldiers' 
cemetery. If peace were a mechanical or polit- 
ical thing God might step in and stop the War. 
But 'peace and goodwill towards men' are 
spiritual things, and must work themselves out 
in the souls of men. 

After the burial I walked down to the 
trenches, and about six o'clock a heavy bom- 
bardment of our line began. With our backs 
to the side of the trench we listened, in the 
darkness, to the crash of bursting shells and 
the whirr of falling fragments. It was a weird 
Christmas evening, but there was no complaint. 



The Rose in the Sky 191 

Each knew that if his children were ever to hear 
the singing of the Christmas angels he must 
stand there listening to the screaming shells. 
If ever they were to see the Star of Bethlehem, 
he must be content for a time with the star- 
shells that every now and then lit up the ground. 
None asked for a false peace. Peace is not 
made by politics but by martyrdom. The lads 
killed in the trenches have died for more than 
the homeland. They have died for all gen- 
erations and all lands. Their sun set early, 
and set in blood, but as they ' went west ' the 
light of their free spirits transformed the cloud 
of tyranny into a rose of freedom. From their 
parents and wives the rose may be hidden by 
the black night of weeping; but when the mor- 
row dawns the children will look into a sky 
without a cloud. As under the rainbow seed- 
time and harvest cannot fail, so under the rose 
of freedom ' peace and goodwill ' shall know 
no end. Never again will such a flood of lust 
and tyranny overwhelm mankind. Our chil- 
dren shall play 'under their own vine and fig- 
tree, none daring to make them afraid.' And, 
as it is in England and in France, so It shall 
be in all lands, for our soldiers have bought 
liberty for all. 

PHnied in the United States of America 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: j-.w 2001 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 



111 Thomson Park Drive 
r.ranhprrv TownshiD. PA 16066 



